{"id":15843,"date":"2025-09-18T14:37:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T19:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&p=15843"},"modified":"2025-09-22T13:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:25:00","slug":"brillo","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/brillo\/","title":{"rendered":"Brillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Cunningham<\/a><\/h2>\n

Brillo<\/h3>\n

ISBN: 978-1-956921-54-0<\/span>\u00a0(pbk.)<\/p>\n

(November 15, 2025)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBrillo-shaped \/ block \/ fragment \/ of life \/ locked behind \/ a window \/ artifact of devotion\u201d What does it mean to \u201c<\/span>see<\/span><\/i> the old face <\/span>in<\/span><\/i> the altered one\u201d? Taking his cues from Wittgenstein\u2019s concept of \u2018seeing-in,\u2019 Paul Cunningham\u2019s <\/span>Brillo<\/span><\/i> is more than a poet\u2019s meditation on Paul Thek\u2019s 1965 \u201cMeat Piece with Warhol Brillo Box,\u201d it\u2019s a perception-expanding experiment that challenges readers to become spectators\u2014to visualize poet as painter. Just as Thek signed his letters to his friend Susan Sontag as \u201cVincent\u201d (after Van Gogh), Cunningham, navigating the psychology of advertising, leaves a different kind of signature on a box of\u2014<\/span>a book of<\/span><\/i>\u2014questions concerning the art market, the meatpacking industry, mechanical reproduction, visual modernity, and Catholicism. <\/span>Brillo<\/span><\/i> might not be <\/span>the<\/span><\/i> answer to the (sin)ewy riddle oozing inside Thek\u2019s pop art reliquary, but, like the knife-sharp clouds of Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s <\/span>Un Chien Andalou<\/span><\/i>, this box\/book might force you to <\/span>look<\/span><\/i> in directions you\u2019ve never dared to before. As Andy Warhol once said: \u201cArt is what you can get away with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Did Andy Warhol sell his soul to the white cube? Paul Cunningham threshes the rim between Warhol\u2019s shallow surface and Paul Thek\u2019s \u201cviscous interiority.\u201d The brand-names (Thek, Warhol, Brillo) are re-pressed, re-touched, and un-boxed as art history unfolds through the gaze of a \u201cworm-like eye.\u201d Some context \u2014in 1964, Warhol debuted his Brillo boxes at Stable gallery to the stupefied critical response: \u201cShit.\u201d Warhol appropriated the 1961 commercial design of James Harvey, who was also an Ab-ex painter. Warhol famously stole from art history and commercial media but also, more discreetly, from his fellow artists (borrowing the term \u201csuperstar\u201d from Jack Smith). Reversing the exchange, Warhol also let himself be stolen from. In 1965, he lent a silkscreen to Sturtevant for her series of \u201cWarhol Flowers.\u201d In that same year, he donated a Brillo Box to Paul Thek for his \u201cMeat Piece with Warhol\u2019s Brillo Box.\u201d Simultaneously, Donald Judd was exhibiting his minimalist cubes. Judd, Warhol, and Thek seem to stage a contest: who can be the fullest-emptiest? The religious parallel is clear: both plerosis (filling) and kenosis (purging) must be achieved before reaching God. Paul Cunningham decrypts the cubes, only to uncover a \u201cflesh of code\u201d and a \u201ccryptography of open pores\u201d that cannot be wormed through. The cubes align in a cabinet of curiosities that becomes Cunningham\u2019s own memento mori<\/i>. Will the void made flesh become spirit? Or will we all rot away in self-consumption…<\/p>\n

\u2014 Felix Bernstein, author of Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul Cunningham\u2019s Brillo<\/i> is not unlike the living presence of what is sourced by concrete poetry. Its living energy and visual identity traces back to Apollinare\u2019s Calligrammes<\/i> and the Brazilian heritage that stems from the modern Manifesto sired by Augusto de Campos.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Will Alexander, author of Divine Blue Light<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brillo<\/i> is a shimmering, disenchanted love letter to surface. Channeling Warhol\u2019s Brillo Boxes, it explores a world where \u201crepetition is not failure\u2014it\u2019s fashion,\u201d and \u201cthe surface is where the violence is.\u201d The author \u201cwears language like a suit that no longer fits,\u201d his voice entranced and exhausted. Echoing Jesus\u2014\u201cEat, this is my body\u201d\u2014the book offers itself as object and offering. In the spirit of Sontag\u2019s Camp\u2014\u201cits love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration\u201d\u2014Brillo<\/i> becomes its own spectacle. \u201cThe box is blank but branded. Like me.\u201d Beautiful, brutal, and impossible to look away from, it performs its own undoing.<\/p>\n

\u2014Valerie Mejer Caso, author of Rain of the Future<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Less an ekphrastic exercise than ecstatic experience, Brillo<\/i> is the transgressive account of one Paul possessing another, as a demon is said to possess a human body. This poem is a panoptical shadowbox, a butcher\u2019s \u201cartifact of \/ devotion,\u201d in which Cunningham shadowboxes Thek, who\u2019d visited the Palermo catacombs before wadding War-hole\u2019s carton with viscera. Each page is a screen-printed poster, which seems to pair Thomas Browne\u2019s Urn-Burial<\/i>\u2014its cerecloths and sepulchers, the \u201cdeformity of death\u201d\u2014with fashion designer Thom Browne\u2019s signature navy, white, and red. The ear here can see, the eyes hear. Fresh is a letter asunder from flesh. Meat has already ingested the verb to eat.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Andrew Zawacki, author of These Late Eclipses<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Cunningham<\/a>
\n9781956921540
\n…like the knife-sharp clouds of Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s <\/span>Un Chien Andalou<\/span><\/em>, this box\/book might force you to <\/span>look<\/span> in directions you\u2019ve never dared to before.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[236,16],"product_tag":[371,507,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-15843","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-books","7":"product_cat-lavender-ink","8":"product_tag-color","9":"product_tag-paul-cunningham","10":"product_tag-poetry","12":"first","13":"instock","14":"taxable","15":"shipping-taxable","16":"purchasable","17":"product-type-simple","18":"berocket_lgv_grid","19":"berocket_lgv_list_grid"},"yoast_head":"\nBrillo is post-conceptual poetry from Paul Cunningham at Lavender Ink \/ Di\u00e1logos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did Andy Warhol sell his soul to the white cube? 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