JOE BRAINARD (1942 - 1994, AMERICAN)
Larry Stanton, (Cigarette Portrait).

Ink and collage on artist's postcard with subject's signature. 152x101 mm; 6x4 inches.

Provenance: Private collection.

Portrait artist, Larry Stanton was not particularly well-known outside of his small circle of influential friends, an impressive group that included David Hockney and Henry Geldzahler. Although based in Manhattan's West Village, his portraits included members of the thriving East Village art scene of the early 1980s and other members of the New York queer community at the time. David Hockney wrote in the preface to Larry Stanton Painting and Drawing (Twelvetrees Press, California, 1986) "Larry Stanton was a portraitist. Skill in portraiture is an instinct, it cannot be taught …The portraitist is an observer of people, his attitudes and feelings will be reflected in his observations and usually the interest in personality makes one study faces, other aspects of personality show in the body; posture, ways of moving, etc., but most is revealed in the face. People make their own faces and Larry knew this instinctively." And Geldzahler, the first Curator of Twentieth Century Art at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, wrote in the same monograph, "It was in the urban setting that [Larry] found his subject matter, the heads and torsos of young men, often large-featured and always seated in an attitude of repose that emanated an attractive energy." Geldzahler was a frequent sitter for the artist.