Balthus (1908–2001)

Balthus is an artist who is bound to disturb you. His lifelong preoccupation with painting prepubescent girls nude or in highly suggestive poses may actually anger you, especially if you think beyond the paintings and into their creation. His painting ‘The Guitar Lesson’ from 1934 shocks us with such overt sadism. Again and again he shows us girls with their legs spread, in outright provocation (as in ‘The Golden Days’ (1944-45), or ‘Therese Dreaming’ (1938)), or in what are ostensibly more innocent works (as in ‘The Children’ (1937), or ‘The Game of Patience’ (1943)). His models were mostly neighbor girls over the decades - Therese Blanchard, Georgette, Jeannette Aldry, Marie-Pierre Colle, and Frederique Tison among others - and one wonders what their parents were thinking. The expression of Frederique Tison in ‘Girl in White’ (1955) shows us a very sad painting if you ask me, as the 17-year-old girl (who had posed for him since the age of 9) seems resigned to the gaze of the 47-year-old painter.

Great art pushes boundaries, is provocative, and causes introspection. Balthus clearly does all that, and with skill as a painter. Is he to be praised as a great artist, or condemned as one encouraging pedophilia, if not (possibly) practicing it? Is there a message or statement he’s making in these images? In ‘The Street’ (1933), with the original version having the man’s hand between the girl’s legs (he altered it at the owner’s request 20 years later), is his point that while this violence is happening to a girl, the rest of the world is disinterested, their heads turned and going about their business? In ‘Girl With a Cat’ (1937), are Therese’s eyes telling us that if we’re thinking dirty thoughts while gazing upon her with our adult eyes, we’re the ones who are perverts? Or are those thoughts a reflection of the discomfort we feel as adults when girls occasionally reveal themselves, innocently, or later, when they inevitably do begin to blossom, but are still children?

The book itself, published after a 1984 exhibition in Paris and New York and written by Sabine Rewald, an expert in Balthus’s work, is well formatted, has a great introduction, 51 full page color reproductions, and 151 black and white illustrations. It provides insightful commentary, and does a great job showing earlier artwork that inspired specific pieces by Balzac, as well as his own sketches and studies. It was interesting to find that Rainer Maria Rilke had been his mother’s lover, and encouraged his art at an early age. In reviewing and rating the book, how much should this weigh in, versus some of the content?

Balthus’s position that the paintings were not meant to be erotic is laughable. Some apologists point out that at the start of his career, the French age of consent was 13 – does this excuse him somewhat, or does it illustrate how hopelessly wrong he was, that this material does not stand the test of time, especially as we’re more sensitized to the violence against women and girls in society?

Answers to these questions are hard to come by. At first I thought that Rewald didn’t go far enough to explain Balthus’s rationale, or to provide a judgment of him one way or another. However, I came to realize that that in itself was the right answer – for art is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s up to the viewer, or reader, to judge. And as an aside, Rewald continued to write about Balthus after 1984, and this excellent article from 1998 expands on her themes, as well as provides additional examples of the treatment of puberty in art (from Rops, Schiele, Munch, Dix, Kirchner, and others).
www.metmuseum.org/pubs/journals/1/pdf/1513021.pdf.bannered.pdf

As for the art itself, my favorites in this collection:
Andre Derain (1936)
Therese (1938) … a more subtle version
The Cherry Tree (1940)
The Game of Patience (1943)
Nude with Cat (1949)
The Room (1952-54) … wow, on the scorn and judgment in the look on the little girl!
The Dream I (1955)
The Turkish Room (1963) … he would marry the model, Setsuko, despite a 35 year age gap
Katia Reading (1968-76)

It’s not for everyone, and it’s art that you may be seriously conflicted by, but if Balthus is an artist you’re interested in trying to fathom, this would be a good book to start with.… (more)

http://www.mytwostotinki.com/?p=2059

"Trouver une chose, c’est toujours amusant; un moment avant elle n’y était pas encore. Mais trouver un chat, c’est inouï! Car ce chat, convenez-en, n’entre pas tout à fait dans votre vie, comme ferait, par exemple, un jouet quelconque tout en vous appartenant maintenant, il reste un peu en dehors, et cela fait toujours: la vie un chat, ce qui donne, je vous assure, une somme énorme. Perdre une chose, c’est bien triste. Il est à supposer qu’elle se trouve mal, qu’elle se casse quelque part, qu’elle finit dans la déchéance. Mais perdre un chat: non! Ce n’est pas permis."

"Finding a thing, that's always fun; a moment before it was not there yet. But finding a cat, that's incredible! For this cat, admit it, does not come entirely into your life, as would for example any toy while belonging to you now. It remains a little off, and it always will be: a life a cat, that adds up to a huge sum, I assure you. Losing a thing is very sad. It has to be assumed that it is in bad condition, that it breaks somewhere, that it ends in decay. But losing a cat: no! That is not allowed."

A boy finds a stray cat, adopts it and gets more and more attached to it. The two spend a lot of time together and we see them in many everyday situations and small adventures. Then, Mitsou, the cat, disappears again; cats are doing this sometimes, so we don't need to suspect the worst. But the boy is inconsolable, searches for Mitsou everywhere, but to no avail.

A sad but everyday story of a heartbreaking loss. What makes it extraordinary is the fact that this real-life experience was made into a series of beautiful drawings by the 11-year old boy to whom it happened. Balthasar Klossowski, today known as Balthus, told this story 1919 in 40 drawings that show an already fully accomplished artist. Cats and girls proved to be his lifelong artistic interests. (His brother Pierre was a also a talented painter and a writer.) Stylistically, the drawings resemble woodcuts and a certain influence of the Flemish artist and book illustrator Frans Masereel, who at around the same time published several "novels without words", can be detected.

Rainer Maria Rilke, who was at that time the lover of Balthus' mother Baladine, added a foreword in French when Mitsou was first published in 1921 and from which the above quote is taken. Therefore the review is not included in German Literature Month. (Rilke wrote also occasionally poems in French.)

Mitsou is a very charming and beautiful book. When you love cats or when you just want to enjoy a book with beautiful illustrations, you will like this precious work very much.

Art historian Sabine Rewald, author of the book Balthus: Cats and Girls describes here how she tracked down the surviving complete set of original drawings that were shown for the first time in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York not long ago. You can see also some samples of these wonderful drawings when you click on the hyperlink.

The English edition of the book is out of print, but you can find this gem with a bit of luck in antiquarian bookstores or online shops. The French and German editions are still available.

Mitsou. Forty Images by Balthus. Preface by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Richard Miller, The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Harry N. Abrams, New York 1984

Sabine Rewald: Balthus: Cats and Girls, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2013… (more)