John Ashbery and Fairefield Porter – Respect For Things as They are

  • 1AshberyJamesSchyler

    Fairefield Porter -Portrait of Schuyler and John Ashbery.. 57-58

    Fairefield Porter – was born on June 10, 1907 – a painter and an art critic.

  • On Fairefield Porter Respect For Things As They Are
    by JOHN ASHBERY

  • Mystery that is essential to reality – Fairefield Porter

  • John Ashbery (Harpers – )

    He has often said that the artist’s role is to make himself misunderstood, but such a position needn’t be taken as mere obfuscation. It might be entertained as a sort of blessing or benediction, something akin to the one he offers in
    And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name”:

    Something
    Ought to be written about how this affects
    You when you write poetry:
    The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
    Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate

    Something between breaths, if only for the sake
    Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
    For other centers of communication, so that understanding
    May begin, and in doing so be undone.He has often said that the artist’s role is to make himself misunderstood, but such a position needn’t be taken as mere obfuscation. It might be entertained as a sort of blessing or benediction, something akin to the one he offers in

  • Ashbury’s poem from Paris Review

  • 1ashburyby Larry Rivers

    Larry Rivers: Pyrography: Poem and Portrait of John Ashbery II, 76 x 58 inches, 1977
    A Vanguard of Friends

  • See John Ashbery portrait by Jane Freilicher (Previous Post)

    The poet John Ashbery, with whom she shared a six-decade friendship, wrote, “Her pictures always have an air of just coming into being, of tentativeness that is the lifeblood of art.” The two met when Ashbery, fresh out of college, came to stay at the poet Kenneth Koch’s apartment at East 16th Street and Third Avenue, and Freilicher, who lived one floor above, provided the key to let him in.

  • Ashbery and Rimbaud

    Where is Rimbaud? (Previous post)