The poem, then, reads as both a piece of art criticism-the poet notes how the painter’s “englobed” representation breaks from mimetic realism, giving the illusion of a complete self-portrait-and as a critique of the artistic design’s inherent simplification of Parmigiano’s life. ![]() Only by ultimately sacrificing his apparent intimacy with Parmigianino, formed through his attachment to the long-dead painter’s symbolic reconstruction of his own life, does Ashbery poignantly convey the limitations of portraiture and urge the need for a revaluation of his poetic enterprise. But the impression of Parmigianino’s life captured in the rounded, rather than flat, reflective surface also stirs a suspicion of its artificiality: it raises doubts about our sympathy with the past as distorted by the painter’s uniquely ordered presentation and personal history. Throughout his self-referential commentary, the poet shares the artistic compassion and intellectual curiosity that an engaged viewer might develop in response to the painter’s image. ![]() And so, as we read the poem, we relate to a spectator from the future, one who reimagines the encircled figure containing the painter’s beautiful face, background window, and foregrounded hand as a potential model for his own self-portrait. Writing in 1972, he recreates the moment he saw the painting for the first time (thirteen years before) in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. ![]() The poet casts himself as both the author of this meditation on Francesco Parmigianino’s 1524 Mannerist portrait, and a fascinated observer, admirer, and intimate companion of the painter, compiling his thoughts on the piece in verse more than four centuries after its creation. John Ashbery is not the subject of his poem, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”, at least not in any straightforward sense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |