Balthus: Works and InterviewsWidely considered one of the greatest, and certainly one of the most mysterious and erotically daring, painters of the twentieth century, Balthus, or Balthazar Klossowski, the French/Polish Count de Rola, died in his adopted Switzerland in 2001 at the age of 93. Descended from Polish aristocracy and raised among important European intellectuals like Rainer Maria Rilke, Andre Gide and Jean Cocteau, Balthus went on to consort and collaborate with many of the most influential members of the Modern avant garde-including Breton, Picasso, Artaud, Giacometti, Camus, Masson and Lacan, to name a fraction. His disturbing and often erotically charged paintings remain enduringly enigmatic. In this beautifully illustrated collection, Mieke Bal analyzes the way that the paintings emanate both reality and un-reality, creating the unique sense of eeriness at the heart of Balthus' work--which always invites viewers in and repels them at the same time. According to Bal, we are given access to a world that is in no way explained. Thus, the works must labor against assumptions of representation and appropriation, drawing us into a world we know not to exist. In Bal's interpretation, this canny fictionality renders the typical allegations of erotic appropriation naive and censorious. Rather than reduce Balthus' work to the adolescent girls, Bal focuses on additional issues such as color, space, genre and history. |
From inside the book
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... Weber ( 1999 : 559-563 ) 16 Weber sees in this painting a merging of Swiss landscapes and Italian and Chinese traditions of landscape painting . Many critics have written on the influence of Chinese landscapes on these works , see in ...
... Weber is sensitive to the movie - star quality of the model , sitting in a hazy , altogether different luminous space from the large man in the front . Weber notices the fantasy character , the dream image , when he writes : The light ...
... Weber's interpretation , for which I wish to offer an alternative . Balthus's biographer considers the figure " otherworldly , more resurrected than earthbound " ( 1999 : 417 ) and I concur . He then proceeds to spell out all the ...