Bob Branaman – love lover of the month -march

“Bob Branaman is a magical elder youth” – Allen Ginsberg

Robert “Bob” Branaman (1933-2024), a great beat artist, painter and poet, was one of the artists to believe in Love Love from the very beginning and contributed with some of his fabulous, intricate paintings as well as heartfelt and witty poems and cartoons since the very first issue of the magazine. He would later join Love Love for issues 2 and 7 and then sadly left us in 2024 when he passed away at the age of 90. This month Love Love honours Bob’s memory and his amazing art. Thank you Bob!

Who was Bob Branaman?

Bob Branaman was a native of Wichita Kansas, he attended Wichita State University and left Kansas in the late fifties to join other Artists known as“ The Wichita Vortex” including the poets Michael Mc- Clure, Charles Plymell, William Burroughs, publisher Dave Hazelwood, artist Bruce Conner and film maker Stan Brakhage.

Thomas Albright in his book Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980, describes Bob Branaman as “Painter, sculptor, filmmaker…His paintings of the 60’s were big, tangled, energetic abstractions. Branaman also worked on an environmental scale, painting the walls and ceilings of entire rooms and Branaman worked with Bruce Conner on films in the l950’s and later turned unceasingly to his own personal film making, recording his surroundings and friends in a style that emphasized multiple images, abstract light, and rapid cutting.”

Branaman was part of group of well know artist who exhibited at the historic Batman Gallery in the mid 1960’s, he had two one man shows there, a two man show with artist George Herms and just recent-ly had a show at MOCA, Xenophilla. Branaman has shown art and films world-wide and currently is showing paintings and drawings in Bergamot Station at the BG Bleicher Gallery.

Commenting his one man show at San Francisco’s Batman Gallery Dean Wallace of the Chronicle 1964; said, “Take a mad genius with brushes and canvas, place him in the mythical not-yet world of William Blake, multiply him by a hundred, and you get some idea of the paintings and drawings of Robert Branaman”.

“The realms of experience open to the theoretical physicist, the depth psychiatrist, the mystic-religious thinker, are also available to the painter and through him to us. Only a few geniuses like Bra-naman know these realms. Only a few artists have the talent and courage to reveal through the soul what others are more willing to reveal through the head.” Eleanor Wygod, Art Historian.

Read more about Bob Branaman on the Allen Ginsberg site here.

Bob bRanaman in Love Love #1

Short Love Poem

The Birds outside

Are going wild

And so is my Heart

Kiss the Ground

Leaves of grass

and trees of mind

heart of soul

and sands of time

Conjure up thee

Love of mine

breaking the clock

and killing time

set free the Sprit

to lick freely

in the fire

Hankie Pankie

Piss in your pants

Romance

Testosterone run wild

When your dick got hard

And stayed that way for hours Off and on for days

Mixed with alcohol & ignorance Then later pot and alchemy

And by the 60 tantric emana- tions

Oh the 60’s the 70’s

The 80’s and 90’s

The two thousands

50 years of fucking Love So

Now what kind of

Tantric pie will I bake

The consuming desires and Burning lust

Have

Transmuted into gold dust Light upon Silence

Tantric Emptiness & Bodicheata Yet it must be romance

I still wanta get in Her

Her pants

Bob branaman in Love Love #2

Not a Love Poem

Woke up in the not quite light
Thinking of all the great loving we had
And now it’s just not right
Everything looks fucked and bad

I wrote you love poems at the start
If I tried it now I think, I’d fart
My life been turned upside down
With out you I’m just a Clown

A Bright Star you are

No one can wear Orange like you
And be a red head too
My expectations are too bright
only in my mind do they find light
that movie reminded me of some dark passage
some time ago
a dreary place one shouldn’t go
even though the Velvet elegance
the memory of it is like snow
the crystalline structure different in every Breath
could lead to anything, even death
But Now
Vivaldi singing in the bathtub
Smoking a joint
he
dedicated to all that’s light and Bright
Silence sits upon emptiness
Light upon Void
and I Say
Good night
Lets see the Light
though it’s the middle of the day
Yes those hormones want to play

Her last orgasm
I’m pretty sure
She faked it
Usually she conked right out
Now she wanted to talk and watch TV
O the apocalyptic signs were there
I just don’t want to see them
Denial, Denial it’s not a river
It’s an Ocean
She told me it was over
And
It was like a door opening out of hell
I didn’t want to leave
I had grown accustom being there

Bob branaman in Love Love #7 – The Psychedelic Animal issue

Shop issues 2 & 7 with Bob Branaman on the Love Love shop here.