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.… (más)