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
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)
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