#james fenton

[boylerpf]

James Fenton Art Nouveau Silver Enamel Pendant Necklace, C. 1908

Source - Boylerpf

[derangedrhythms]

Turn out the light and I'll explain.

James Fenton, Out of Danger; from 'I'll Explain'

[shy-girl04]

Unknown credit

Excerpt from...

In Paris with You

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,

If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,

If we skip the Champs Elysées

And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room

Doing this and that

To what and whom

Learning who you are,

Learning what I am.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,

The little bit of Paris in our view.

There’s that crack across the ceiling

And the hotel walls are peeling

And I’m in Paris with you.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris.

I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.

I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,

I’m in Paris with … all points south.

Am I embarrassing you?

I’m in Paris with you.

James Fenton

[the-crooked-library]

the most 70s-80s era devil's minion poem to me is In Paris With You by James Fenton. it reads like whatever Daniel would be yapping about right before he asked Armand to turn him and every time i see it i cannot help but think of them

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Genius is nothing other than the ability to retrieve childhood at will.

Charles Baudelaire

Is this all there is to art? A kind of solipsism? An inability to get past the egoism of infancy?

In Fellini’s masterpiece 8+1/2 the answer seems to lie with unraveling the mysterious phrase ‘Asa Miso Nasa’. Up front I will admit the film is not easy to follow as it doesn't really have a great plot and it does feel like episodic that gives it a disjointed look. But that doesn't mean there are no grand narratives underpinning it because there is.

The film, released in 1963, is about a movie director named Guido. His latest project has stalled before filming has even begun. Played by the incomparable Marcello Mastroianni, Guido is suffering from anxiety and creative block. It’s no wonder. He has sown chaos in his love life, and his creative indecision is producing near-mutinous levels of angst among actors, agents and crew. But all of this is mere surface tumult. Guido is haunted by something deeper. Something to do with . . . what? His parents, his childhood, the Catholic church? Feelings of shame and bliss? Death? All he has to answer his question is the phrase 'Asa Miso Nasa' to unlock answers but something he doesn't quite get.

In many ways ‘Asa Miso Nasa’ is a red herring, a sort of wild goose chase to nowhere. Like "Rosebud" in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, or the madeleine in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, "Asa Nisi Masa" is a Hitchcockian ‘MacGuffin’ - a convenient object upon which the plot turns. In Fellini’s film it’s used as a gateway to crucial memories of the central character - even though it is itself peripheral to the central story.

Fellini’s answer is, I think, with his apprehension that the urge to make art is connected to a time in our lives when we were lifted and carried about, lowered into baths, tucked into bed; when we first used our lips to suck and to kiss; when we flapped our arms and kicked our legs; or when we danced without unrestrained joy. In other words, when we felt ourselves to be unique in our childhood.

Why should that be so? James Fenton, the great poet and critic, provided a plausible answer, even if he was writing about something else.

“Because,” wrote Fenton - and here comes the part that Guido, the anxious, grown-up filmmaker, must reckon with - “there follows the primal erasure, when we forget all those early experiences, and it is rather as if there is some mercy in this, since if we could remember the intensity of such pleasure it might spoil us for anything else. We forget what happened exactly, but we know that there was something, something to do with music and praise and everyone talking, something to do with flying through the air, something to do with dance.”

Something Fellini-esque, you might say.

Art is more than a pathetic desire to revert to childhood bliss. It’s true that the self-centredness of great artists - and by no means just male artists - is bound up with their desire to find again the treasure in the corner of the childhood bedroom, and the only sound is the children’s chant: “Asa Nisi Masa.” But what do all artists want if not to be understood.

But here we run into a problem. For all the attention artists seek, there is a kind of shame for them in being “understood.” Being “explained” is never more than an inch from being “explained away,” rendered redundant, losing the vital quality that makes one unique. Their egos can't handle that. So we can never judge beauty in art if we limit ourselves to just the life and meaning of an artist. If anyone ever says they don't like this art because of this artist was not nice or was abusive or held questionable beliefs then they are either illiterate fools or as shallow as the unfunny Hannah Gadsby is about Picasso.

There is much, much more to art, which, at its best, is always about transcending solipsism and reaching for beauty.

For Roger Scruton, the great philosopher of aesthetics, “Beauty is an ultimate value - something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations,” Scruton developed a largely metaphysical aspect to understanding standards of art and beauty. For Scruton, the purpose of art is to save the sacred - the beautiful.

For Scruton, beauty is wrapped up in his view of the sacred. The sacred begins with the fundamental nature of man as an end, not merely a means - here childhood memories are a means not an end. Scruton then, is able to apply this concept of ends to beauty. The ability to place meaning on things is what gives man his sacredness and makes him an end unto himself. The sacred gives us a glimpse into eternity, and provides man with the cure to his temporal misery. In a manner almost Platonic, Scruton describes the sacred as pulling man out of the world of things and into the transcendental realm. It is an attempt not so much to find a glimpse of our childhood so much as to find Eden again, even if only in a finite temporal way, and to “prefigure our eternal home.”

Thus, it is this sacred nature of ends, not means, that Scruton puts forth in his understanding of beauty. In this Scruton echoes those philosophers of that past. Some like the Greek philosopher, Plotinus, beauty is seen as an ultimate value, pursued for its own sake, and the way in which the “divine unity makes itself known to the soul.”

Beauty is the glue that holds cultures together. It transcends individual places and ages. Light shining through stained glass in the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the face of Mary in Michelangelo’s La Pietà, a Bach orchestral suite, or a Frederico Fellini film (and none more so than the playful but sublime 8+1/2). Our experiences of these things connect us to the experiences of so many others over the decades and centuries since their creation. The beauty links us with a sense of profoundness and awe.

[metamorphesque]

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two. I'm one of your talking wounded. I'm a hostage. I'm marooned. But I'm in Paris with you.

James Fenton, In Paris With You

[rottikattart]

Colored Sketch commission for @beccadrawsstuff of their phankids Annie and James <3

Commission info

[serpentinesheldonserpentine]

To my Tumblr Friends at Thanksgiving

Dear friends,

I know for some of you Thanksgiving was harder this year. Some of you celebrated with an empty chair at your table, as did I. And I understand how much that hurts, and I want you to know I am moved by what you have shared with me.

I wish I could snap my fingers or say some magic words that will make your heartbreak go away. Should you know any shortcut, please message. I could use a quick cure myself.

In the meantime I turn to those wiser than me for perspective on loss.

I found this poem by James Fenton comforting. Perhaps you will, too.

Peace be with you.

For Andrew Wood

James Fenton

What would the dead want from us

Watching from their cave?

Would they have us forever howling?

Would they have us rave

Or disfigure ourselves, or be strangled

Like some ancient emperor’s slave?

None of my dead friends were emperors

With such exorbitant tastes

And none of them were so vengeful

As to have all their friends waste

Waste quite away in sorrow

Disfigured and defaced.

I think the dead would want us

To weep for what they have lost.

I think that our luck in continuing

Is what would affect them most.

But time would find them generous

And less self-engrossed.

And time would find them generous

As they used to be

And what else would they want from us

Than an honoured place in our memory,

A favourite room, a hallowed chair,

Privilege and celebrity?

And so the dead might cease to grieve

And we might make amends

And there might be a pact between

Dead friends and living friends.

What our dead friends would want from us

Would be such living friends.