The creamy sensuality of the toothbrush rack melts your heart. Talk about ennobling humble objects with tender attention. It’s an act of painterly love lavished on a trivial appurtenance. Both lyrical and somehow sad.

… A reticent Oklahoman who died of AIDS in 1994, at the age of 52…, [Brainard] arrived in Manhattan in 1960, and fell in with what was probably the last group of artists and writers to flourish in the city without any money… [He] sought to take up as little space as possible… specialized in small-scale works… understood how cheapo things (comic books, cigarette packaging, gift tags, restaurant receipts, etc.) can be an expression of authentic emotion… The poet Ron Padgett… recalls a period of artistic crisis in which “he took an increasingly dim view of his work.” Overly conscious of his deficiencies, he signed up for classes at the New York Academy of Art. His remaining years were given over to reading novels.

(Deborah Solomon, “No Ordinary Joe,” New York Times, 11-16-22)

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