{"id":106425,"date":"2017-01-05T19:33:02","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T00:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106425"},"modified":"2017-01-06T10:39:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T15:39:01","slug":"all-the-kitsch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/05\/all-the-kitsch\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Kitsch"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

John Ashbery, A Dream of Heroes<\/i>, 2015, mixed media collage, 15 3\/4 x 20 1\/2.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Ashbery is eighty-nine. In the last two months, he\u2019s published a new collection of poems,\u00a0Commotion of the Birds<\/em><\/a>, and launched an exhibition of his latest collage work<\/a>, which appears through January 28\u00a0at Tibor de Nagy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What have\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>done in the last two months?<\/p>\n

If you, like me, are a third of Ashbery\u2019s age but have accomplished neither of those things, ever, you can still take solace in Ashbery\u2019s work: it\u2019s rambunctious and joyous and seems much more the work of an impish spirit-animal than an eighty-nine-year-old man. As always, his\u00a0collages, a selection of which appear below, work in enchanting synchrony with his poems. Both radiate the same lambent heat\u2014you can imagine him putting on thick mitts to slide them out of\u00a0the oven of\u00a0his mind. Writing about\u00a0Commotion<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0Harper\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>last year, Ben Lerner noted that Ashbery\u2019s \u201cmixture of familiarity and foreignness is at once funny and profound<\/a>\u2014many of the formulations are ridiculous, and yet it\u2019s as though Ashbery has invented an Esperanto through which we have access to the kitsch of all possible worlds. We hear, as if for the millionth time, what we have never heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the poems are the Esperanto, the collages are maybe the semaphore or the pictograms\u2014a new language\u00a0to convey all that kitsch, to smash together the familiar and the foreign. His collage\u00a0The Pause That Refreshes\u00a0<\/em>could be subtitled with a line from \u201cHillbilly Airs and Dances<\/a>\u201d: \u201cvintage treat, vintage street.\u201d And looking at that guy in To the City\u2014<\/em>the seated one, giving the thumbs up in short shorts\u2014I thought of the couplet that opens \u201cA Funny Dream\u201d: \u201cHis aunt was accepted. \/ How cool is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Very cool, John. Very cool.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

See more of Ashbery\u2019s collages on the <\/a><\/em>Daily<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and in our Spring 2009 issue<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Departure Mode<\/i>, 2016, collage on paper, 4 3\/4″ x 6″.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>

Pie in the Sky<\/i>, 2016, mixed media collage, 11″ x 8 3\/4″.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>

Salle d’Attente<\/i>, 2016, collage on paper, 14 1\/2″ x 18 3\/4″.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>

Still Life<\/i>, 2016, mixed media collage, 11″ x 8 1\/2″.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>

The Pause That Refreshes<\/i>, 2016, collage on paper, 11″ x 8 1\/4″.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>

To the City<\/i>, 2016, mixed media collage, 11 x 8 1\/2.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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