Info on Balthaus
Donna Fritzsche
Does anyone know much about the French Painter
Balthaus. I am particularly interested in what his
motive was in painting pictures of young girls
in suggestive poses. (I am writing a paper comparing
one of his paintings to someone elses.) I was told that
it was just his "gig" to get attention - which I think
is a pity because he is a good painter.
Thanks
Donna
Dave Vranicar
don...@ils.nwu.edu (Donna Fritzsche) wrote:
Donna,
David Bowie interviewed Balthus (note spelling. You might have gotten
it confused with Bauhaus) in the Autumn 1994 issue of Modern Painters,
A Quarterly Journal of the Fine Arts, published in London. The phone
number of the editorial offices is 071-636 6305/6058, FAX: 071- 580
5615. You can probably also find it in a large metropolitan U.S.
library or a university library.
Balthus's real name is Comte Balthazar Klossowski de Rola.
I like his work too and hate to hear it dismissed as a "gig" or a
gimmick to get attention. I think his paintings are sensual and
dreamlike in a manner one could learn a lot by studying. Somehow they
make me think of Rousseau, Magritte and Chagall though they are
distinctly different and often more overtly sexual.
I've also been looking for an exhibition catalog or a monograph on
him, yet I've never see them in any museum shops or large bookstores
when I travel to major cities. Can anyone else help? I'm off to do a
web search, and I'll keep you posted.
--
Dave Vranicar
d...@mindspring.com
Donna Fritzsche
Thanks for the reply.
Actually, I was told by someone that it was Balthus himself that said
it was just his bit to get attention (they were quoting the Bowie article -
I haven't read it, so I don't know).
When I said it was a pity, I meant it was a pity for
someone who was such a good painter to belittle his work with content that
many find offensive. In my opinion, he can paint what he wants, but the
fact that he uses real models, puts his work in the legal category (and in
\
my opinion, moral also) of child pornography. Your point about dreamlike
is well taken, and in his less overtly sexual paintings, I find that a
nice quality also.
I appreciate your reply, even though we actually differ quite a bit
in our intepretation of his work.
- Donna
Helen Bakk
In article <donnaf-1305...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>, don...@ils.nwu.edu says...
The following has been excerpted from:
SOLITARY IN THE CITY OF ART.(painters R.B. Kitaj and Balthus)(On Art).
Perl, Jed
New Republic.
March 13 1995, v212, n11, p35(5)
COPYRIGHT The New Republic Inc. 1995
Lefevre Gallery was hosting a Balthus show, which consisted of
a single new painting, an almost six-and-a-half-foot-high canvas of a
blond-haired girl playing with a cat.
Balthus is painting very slowly these days, so the appearance of The
Cat with Mirror III, the first work to come out of his studio in five
years, is an event.
Balthus, who has for most of his sixty-odd-year career taken the position that
the work should speak for itself, is beginning to suspect that those who remain
silent are condemned to being misunderstood? In recent years Balthus has
encouraged his literary friends, who were once instructed not even to mention
the date of his birth, to examine the ins and outs of his biography. And he has
himself been doing something he never did—granting interviews. The most
extensive of these, published in the English quarterly Modern Painters this
past fall, is a conversation that Balthus had over the course of an afternoon
with the rock star David Bowie (who is a serious collector of contemporary
English art and has lately begun to show his own paintings). It’s an essential
addition to the Balthus archives, a great old painter’s most sustained effort to
tell us what he believes.
In the Modern Painters interview, Balthus sounds both cheerful and austere, a
latter-day philosophe ensconced in a Swiss "retirement" from which he's
pleased to contemplate his turbulent past in Paris and Rome. Balthus is
perfectly aware of what is going on around him. Sometimes he simply turns
aside a line of questioning, and a few of those silences tell us everything that
we need to know. Listen carefully to Balthus on the subject of subject matter;
after all, his sexually explicit imagery was controversial long before Robert
Mapplethorpe was born. "The subject has no importance," Balthus says. "The
subject for me is always a pretext to make a painting." This is not an evasion
but a considered high modernist position. Balthus wants both the provocateurs
and the prudes to know that they're missing the point.
What, then, is the point? I think that according to Balthus it is that the real
story is the story of the making of the painting. Balthus is, after his own
fashion, a formalist, but he hastens to distance himself from what he sees as
the solipsistic situation of the artist who is "obsessed by painting."
What Balthus believes is missing in much modern painting is "tension ... a sort
of no repose." As far as his own practice is concerned, he finds the needed
tension not in his subject matter but in the very process of looking--"looking at
a chair, looking at a cup of tea, or any object at all." The looking out is also a
looking in, for the truth is that much of the apparently naturalistic material in
Balthus's paintings has been dreamed up in the studio. There's an almost
metaphysical dimension to perception. As Balthus explains it, even "when I
paint something after nature, I'm always recognizing something in myself."
Balthus's rejection of the question of subject matter--although probably to
some degree strategic, a jibe at the BalthUSIAns who think that there's nothing
else--(clipped) Balthus is our most triumphant current example of an artist who
knows how to put it all back together. In the Modern Painters interview he says
that he is "always tapping the same nail. I think what I have kept in a certain
way, is my vision as a child. That sort of surprise in front of things." With this
parable of a child banging a first nail into a first piece of wood who turns into
an old man who's doing exactly the same thing, Balthus takes his rightful place
among the great simplifiers. "I'm considering myself as a craftsman," he says.
"I don't want to be an artist. I have a horror of the word."
Since completing the melancholy Passage du Commerce Saint-Andre in 1954,
Balthus has become an increasingly inward-turning painter. He has put no
more than two figures in a painting in the past twenty-eight years; mostly he
paints one figure at a time. The raw materials that go into his paintings don't
vary that much. There are the juxtaposed planes of floor and wall and
furniture, the curves of the model's body, the angle of the light. But through
subtle shifts in the way that he carpenters together these essential elements he
now seems to be able to make just about anything happen. He's a master
craftsman who works unhurriedly, deliberately: the authenticity of the product
is guaranteed by the austerity of the process. Balthus has become as much of
a back-to-basics artist as Mondrian. I think that it is Balthus's insistence on
simplicity that frequently dismays those who look to his work for what
Mondrian does not give them.
In London I heard it said that Balthus's new canvas was perfect but somehow
not satisfying. Balthus has answered this complaint in the Modern Painters
interview, in which he observes that if people look to his paintings for the
disharmony that they know in life they will be disappointed. He says that
people are "shrinking back from beauty.... If you speak of beauty, you are at
once suspected of ... kitsch."
When David Bowie asks Balthus which of his paintings he likes the best, he
answers as many artists do, by talking about his recent work. I agree with
Balthus when he says that the new Cat with Mirror is one of the finest things he
has ever done. It's a painting that unites the Biedermeier solidity of the
compositions that first made Balthus famous in the 1930s with the overripe
color that was enchanting him in the 1950s: that is its particular kind of
harmony. Here the old BalthUSIAn erotic charge has cooled to an
androgynous tingle. The young girl, dressed in contemporary tunic and
leggings that look a lot like a medieval costume, might easily be mistaken for
an extremely handsome young prince. The painting offers a distant,
philosophical view of beauty. The key to everything is the extraordinary scale
of the work. It is intimate yet monumental, and that union-of-opposites leaves
us with a feeling of almost preternatural calm. There is a story to be read in
this densely worked yet utterly spontaneous canvas, and it is a very simple
one. Balthus began to paint a fairy-tale princess, he worked for five long years,
and when he was finished the princess had been granted eternal life.
--
******************************************
From Her Holiness, Harpy of Hoopla.
Been there, done that, matters not.
~ Helen Bakk ~ I am NOT E-mailable.
*******************************************
rbgann
On this Balthus fellow:
> In article <4n8lqd$m...@mule2.mindspring.com>, d...@atl.mindspring.com wrote:
> > I've also been looking for an exhibition catalog or a monograph on
> > him, yet I've never see them in any museum shops or large bookstores
> > when I travel to major cities.
There are at least two nice largish books on Balthus, one of which is by
his son, Stanislaus Klossowski. I am surprised that you can't find them.
Try looking in books in print or doing a book search through a used
bookstore. If you want/need ISBN numbers e-mail me and I'll get them for
you.
In article <donnaf-1405...@129.105.100.37>, don...@ils.nwu.edu
(Donna Fritzsche) wrote:
> Actually, I was told by someone that it was Balthus himself that said
> it was just his bit to get attention (they were quoting the Bowie article -
> I haven't read it, so I don't know).
> When I said it was a pity, I meant it was a pity for
> someone who was such a good painter to belittle his work with content that
> many find offensive. In my opinion, he can paint what he wants, but the
> fact that he uses real models, puts his work in the legal category (and in
> my opinion, moral also) of child pornography. Your point about dreamlike
> is well taken, and in his less overtly sexual paintings, I find that a
> nice quality also.
I've not read the Bowie article (though I will be doing so as quickly as
possible), yet I find it nearly impossible to believe that this is true or
that he would have said it was. Balthus began painting and drawing at a
very young age (Rilke was a friend of his mother and encouraged him to a
great extent, but that's another story) and his subject matter has not
changed much in the past seventy years. It seems unlikely that anyone
would continue with subjects not important to them aesthetically for such
a long period. Especially after the work passed the million dollar mark so
long ago.
Additionally, it is worth noting that his brother Pierre Klossowski, a
noted writer and philosopher, works extensively with related themes.
Stanislaus implies in his book that the nature of the subject matter
should be understood in a spiritual or alchemical manner (Stanislaus is
also the author of an introductory work on the history of alchemy) rather
than in a prurient way.
In any event while I find some of Balthus' work "erotic" (in a sense
closely related to aesthetics), I doubt any of it could be considered
pornographic according to any reasonable standards of decency. That word
"reasonable" would exclude fanaticism of all kinds.
I find it unlikely that such a good painter, and intelligent as well,
would make such a flatly stupid remark. consider if you will the
relationship between his work and say that of Bonnard. The formal concerns
are quite similar in many respects. The treatment of space, color, light,
and patterning, for instance.
I wonder how it is that you believe this work to be child pornography.
Please explain.
I guess it's fairly clear that I am a fan. I consider Balthus to be one of
the finest painters of this century and oftimes marvel at the extent to
which his subject matter takes precedence in almost all discussion of his
work over the formal elements in which his genius is so clearly displayed.
Subject matter which is frankly tame when taken in the context of so much
twentieth century art. Perhaps it offends because the paintings are so
well executed or because the work is beautiful.
rbgann
"the only thing gann takes seriously is gann" -- steve erickson, Arc d'X
rbgann
In article <4nb4fn$o...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, He...@been-there.com (Helen
Bakk) wrote:
> The following has been excerpted from:
> SOLITARY IN THE CITY OF ART.(painters R.B. Kitaj and Balthus)(On Art).
> Perl, Jed
> New Republic.
> March 13 1995, v212, n11, p35(5)
> COPYRIGHT The New Republic Inc. 1995
and there followed a really nice piece of art crit. As I was previously
unaware of it, I would like to thank H. Bakk for posting it.
Helen Bakk
In article <Richard_Gann-1...@bootp-19.iis.brown.edu>, Richar...@brown.edu
says...
>I wonder how it is that you believe this work to be child pornography.
>Please explain.
I am not trying to answer for the person you addressed this to. But I think
that people who DO read eroticism into the works of Balthus further project
what the artist was thinking and DOING as he worked with the models.
It is a sign of the times that people will read prurient intent into many an
innocent action. There are people languishing in jail today because someone
believed the Un-believable -- wonderfully imaginative tales told by children.
And you risk all sorts of problems with the law if you take photographs of
YOUR OWN children in the nude and have them developed and the photo
processor calls the authorities.
Donna Fritzsche
In article <4nfd49$j...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, He...@been-there.com (Helen
Bakk) wrote:
I don't have time for a full reply right now (Im sick and busy
simulataneously), but I was deriving my definition of child pornography
from the currently legal one as described in a paper I found on the web
(search for Balthus). The specific picture I had in mind was Young Girl
with Cat , 1939, Art Inst. of Chicago. In the picture, Balthus uses a
variety of techniques
to focus the viewer's attention on the young girl's crotch, displaying
her white underwear. It doesn't matter to me what the artist was thinking,
and I make no assumption that he was doing anything but painting, but I do
believe that having a young girl pose for this picture is wrong. If it were
painted from his imagination, its a different discussion.
Will follow up on this later.
- Donna
rbgann
> In article <Richard_Gann-1...@bootp-19.iis.brown.edu>,
Richar...@brown.edu
> says...
>
> >I wonder how it is that you believe this work to be child pornography.
> >Please explain.
>
> I am not trying to answer for the person you addressed this to.
But I'm still hoping for a response, as I would very much like to gain
some insight into the process.
> But I think
> that people who DO read eroticism into the works of Balthus further project
> what the artist was thinking and DOING as he worked with the models.
Projection sounds like the right word to me.
> It is a sign of the times that people will read prurient intent into many an
> innocent action.
Couldn't agree with you more.
> There are people languishing in jail today because someone
> believed the Un-believable -- wonderfully imaginative tales told by children.
You know, unfortunately some of those stories turn out to be true (yep,
the defender of Balthus worries about kids getting abused -- go figure).
The tough part is telling the difference I guess.
> And you risk all sorts of problems with the law if you take photographs of
> YOUR OWN children in the nude and have them developed and the photo
> processor calls the authorities.
One person's representation of innocence is another's porn. Says more
about the photo-processor than it does about the parent, says I. Which I
guess is related to my point about Balthus.
Helen Bakk
In article <donnaf-1705...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>, don...@ils.nwu.edu says...
> Balthus uses a
>variety of techniques
>to focus the viewer's attention on the young girl's crotch
Perhaps that was his intent. BUT young girls typically are innocent
of any INTENT to sit in a less than proper pose. MOST young girls
never think about whether or not their panties show, and God forbid
that society should ever get so perverted that they should have to
worry about such a matter. I think Balthus would have been less
than genuine had he NOT painted the girl in what is a VERY NATURAL
and relaxed pose for ANY child. Our current obsession with pornography
and fear of exposure to it is a sicker state of mind, IMHO, than the
prurient thoughts of the few pedophiles among us.
Donna Fritzsche
In article <4nkhta$1...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, He...@been-there.com (Helen
Bakk) wrote:
As usual, you have taken your totally overreactive stance,
which is usually bullshit.
I doubt that you have seen the picture in question, because there
is no doubt that it was a "posed" picture of Balthus' making.
I also don't know who you are to speak for MOST young
girls given that you cannot even reveal your own identity.
It is more than a little difficult to take your "real life" experiences
into account when you refuse to use your own name and are not emailable,
(even though you feel free to email others at your whim).
Also, please note that child pornography and adult pornography are
very different issues and you seem to be grouping them together.
>>> There are people languishing in jail today because someone
believed the Un-believable -- wonderfully imaginative tales told by children.
And you risk all sorts of problems with the law if you take photographs of
YOUR OWN children in the nude and have them developed and the photo
processor calls the authorities.
--
Also, I find your supposed sympathy for those wrongfully in jail laughable,
since less than a year ago, one of your alter egos totally trashed those in jail
when it was suggested that they become part of this mailing list.
Sorry Richard Gann, I would have been happy to explain my perspective more
clearly, but I really don't feel like putting up with Ms Helen Bakk or
whatever
his/her pseudonym of the month is. Richard, feel free to email me if you'd like
to correspond futher on this topic.
-- Donna
Helen Bakk
In article <donnaf-1905...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>, don...@ils.nwu.edu says...
>As usual, you have taken your totally overreactive stance,
>which is usually bullshit.
I would ask you who is over-reactive? And if you think my input to
these discussions is "bullshit" then you have the privilege of NOT
reading whatever I write. I didn't refer to your REACTIONARY
remark about Balthus as "bullshit" or anything else derogatory.
I responded with what I felt was a reasoned and reasonable
POSSIBLE explanation for the depiction of the painting you
described --
>I doubt that you have seen the picture in question, because there
>is no doubt that it was a "posed" picture of Balthus' making.
-- and yes, I am familiar with all of Balthus major
works, including this one. I have had the pleasure of seeing some
of his work first-hand in museums over the years.
>I also don't know who you are to speak for MOST young
>girls given that you cannot even reveal your own identity.
I have revealed all I care to reveal about myself over the course of
contributing to this newsgroup. Having raised a daughter and two sons,
having been raised in an all-girl family with three other sisters, currently
watching four female grandchildren grow, having dealt with children all
my l-o-n-g life, I feel somewhat qualified to speak for what MOST little
girls act like. And I do NOT limit my experiences to little American
girls, having lived abroad and traveled the world in my day, I can speak
about little girls (and boys too, for that matter) world-wide.
>Also, please note that child pornography and adult pornography are
>very different issues and you seem to be grouping them together.
They are NOT different issues. It is the ADULTS who do the exploiting
and who are dealing in pornography, NOT the kids. Children would have
no understanding of sexual mores were it not taught to them by adults.
Children would normally remain innocent, exploring their sexual differences
in their own sweet time were it not made "nasty" and "pornographic" by
we adults.
>Also, I find your supposed sympathy for those wrongfully in jail laughable,
>since less than a year ago, one of your alter egos totally trashed those in jail
>when it was suggested that they become part of this mailing list.
You obviously have a very liberal attitude when it comes to some issues, but
when it comes to Balthus, you seem to take a stance somewhere to the right
of what Jesse Helms would expound. I never said there were not people in
jail who don't belong there. The incidence you refer to was over whether
criminals who DO prey on the general public should be allowed unfettered
access to the Internet.
sl...@cc.usu.edu
don...@ils.nwu.edu (Donna Fritzsche) writes:
in response to hey_lean_back
... [clip]
> I doubt that you have seen the picture in question, because there
> is no doubt that it was a "posed" picture of Balthus' making.
Balthus works primarily from memory and the imagination.
who knows how much posturing that involved...
rbgann
Don't read news for a few days and look what happens, got to reply in multiples.
Well,
> In article <4nkhta$1...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, He...@been-there.com (Helen
> Bakk) wrote:
>
> > In article <donnaf-1705...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>,
> don...@ils.nwu.edu says...
> > > Balthus uses a
> > >variety of techniques
> > >to focus the viewer's attention on the young girl's crotch
> >
> > Perhaps that was his intent. BUT young girls typically are innocent
> > of any INTENT to sit in a less than proper pose. MOST young girls
> > never think about whether or not their panties show, and God forbid
> > that society should ever get so perverted that they should have to
> > worry about such a matter. I think Balthus would have been less
> > than genuine had he NOT painted the girl in what is a VERY NATURAL
> > and relaxed pose for ANY child. Our current obsession with pornography
> > and fear of exposure to it is a sicker state of mind, IMHO, than the
> > prurient thoughts of the few pedophiles among us.
Would that there were fewer pedophiles among us. That said, I have to
concur with H Bakk on the issue of innocence.
In article <donnaf-1905...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>,
don...@ils.nwu.edu (Donna Fritzsche) wrote:
> As usual, you have taken your totally overreactive stance,
> which is usually bullshit.
I really don't want to get involved in this aspect of the "discussion".
> I doubt that you have seen the picture in question, because there
> is no doubt that it was a "posed" picture of Balthus' making.
I've seen the picture. The fact that B posed the picture does not change
the fact that it is a natural pose.
> Also, please note that child pornography and adult pornography are
> very different issues
Realizing that this was not addressed to me: Noted and happily not guilty
of this.
> Sorry Richard Gann, I would have been happy to explain my perspective more
> clearly, but I really don't feel like putting up with Ms Helen Bakk or
> whatever
> his/her pseudonym of the month is. Richard, feel free to email me if
you'd like
> to correspond futher on this topic.
Donna, I am assuming that you continue to follow this thread. I wanted to
make a few public statements with regard to my attitudes. I am sorry that
you and H Bakk seem so set at each other. Apparently there is quite a lot
of bad history here of which I am blissfully ignorant. I'd be happy to
continue this discussion via e-mail if that seems more appropriate to you.
rbgann
In article <donnaf-1705...@donnaf.ils.nwu.edu>,
don...@ils.nwu.edu (Donna Fritzsche) wrote:
> I don't have time for a full reply right now (Im sick and busy
> simulataneously), but I was deriving my definition of child pornography
> from the currently legal one as described in a paper I found on the web
> (search for Balthus).
I can't find any papers on Balthus on the web. Sorry, must be particularly
inept today.
The specific picture I had in mind was Young Girl
> with Cat , 1939, Art Inst. of Chicago. In the picture,
I know the picture. While for the most part I concur with your
compositional analysis (though perhaps oversimplified), I question the
notion that the intention of the artist is unimportant. I question that
notion generally and specifically.
Generally:It would seem to me that our assessment of a work of art derives
in part from our awareness of the success or lack thereof of the artist's
ability to communicate to us via his/her medium. (cf. Duchamp, The
Creative Act)
Specifically: If you would raise the issue of pornography, at least
insofar as I understand that term and the history of its application or
attempted application to works of art, intent would be a major issue. (cf.
any decent copy of Joyce's Ulysses with the judgment of the appeals court)
> and I make no assumption that he was doing anything but painting, but I do
> believe that having a young girl pose for this picture is wrong. If it were
> painted from his imagination, its a different discussion.
This is quite an interesting notion. The painting is a representation of
an event that took place (assuming that he worked from a model, which I
believe he does at least initially, though as the works generally take
years to finish it seems unlikely that he continues to work from a model
throughout), thus pornography. However, if the painter invented the image
from his supposedly twisted mind, it would not be porn. I am beyond
confused and require some sort of explanation to this logic, by the
apparent application of which I could paint in a similar style to B's a
group of people engaged in acts that would cause the Marguis de Sade to
shudder and that would not be pornography since I would be inventing the
scene.
Please?
rbgann
> don...@ils.nwu.edu (Donna Fritzsche) writes:
> in response to hey_lean_back
> ... [clip]
> > I doubt that you have seen the picture in question, because there
> > is no doubt that it was a "posed" picture of Balthus' making.
>
> Balthus works primarily from memory and the imagination.
> who knows how much posturing that involved...
Whence this tidbit, please? My understanding was that almost all of his
pictures were developed with models. The models do not remain for the
entire course of the painting, but are present initially while the basic
structure is planned.