The Nancy Book, by Joe Brainard, hardcover, 144 pages, 9.75 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches, 1.4 pounds, Siglio Press, list price: $39.50
Despite its title, The Nancy Book is not kid's stuff — not only because it includes a dozen sexually explicit cartoon images, but also because it resonates as fine art, not funny-pages fodder. The late New York artist Joe Brainard (1942-94) took his childhood fixation with Ernie Bushmiller's precocious and precisely drawn cartoon character Nancy and, through the 1960s and into the '70s, worked it into a series of small-scale drawings and collages that dropped the 8-year-old girl into the worlds of, among other things, classical and modern art. Here's Nancy as Mona Lisa, or trapped in a Mondrian grid; there she is, her head superimposed on the body of then 18-month-old surrealist pioneer Andre Breton.
It's a subversive, funny and clearly very personal work that startles with its audacity, post-modern verve and determination to let a little girl in a skirt be a stand-in for women and men across a spectrum of life's raw experiences. (You won't find The Nancy Book at brick-and-mortar stores; try an online bookseller, your local museum store or sigliopress.com.)
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