Balthus

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Balthazar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 in Paris – February 18, 2001) was an esteemed Polish/French modern artist whose work was ultimately anti-modern.

Life and work

Style and themes

Balthus' style is primarily classical and academic. Though his technique and compositions were inspired by pre-renaissance painters, there are also eerie intimations reminiscent of contemporary surrealists like de Chirico. Painting the figure at a time when figurative art was largely ignored, he is widely recognised as an important 20th century artist. Many of his paintings show young girls in an erotic context. Balthus insisted that his work was not pornographic, but that it just recognized the discomforting facts of children's sexuality.

Early life

In his formative years his art was sponsored by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. His father, Erich Klossowski, a noted art historian (he wrote a monograph on Daumier), and his mother Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro (known as Baladine Klossowska) were part of the cultural elite in Paris. Balthus' older brother, Pierre Klossowski, was a philosopher and writer influenced by theology and the works of Marquis de Sade. Among the visitors and friends of the Klossowskis were famous writers such as André Gide and Jean Cocteau, who found some inspiration for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) on his visits to the family.

In 1921 Mitsou, a book which included forty drawings by Balthus, was published. It depicted the story of a young boy and his cat, with a preface by Balthus' mentor Rilke. The theme of the story foreshadowed his life-long fascination with cats, which resurfaced with his self-portrait as The King of Cats (1935). In 1926 Balthus visited Florence, copying frescos by Piero della Francesca, which inspired another early ambitious work by the young painter: the tempera wall paintings of the Protestant church of the Swiss village of Beatenberg (1927). From 1930 to 1932 he lived in Morocco, was drafted into the Moroccan infantry in Kenitra and Fes, worked as a secretary, and sketched his painting La Caserne (1933).

A young artist in Paris

Moving in 1933 into his first Paris studio at the Rue de Furstemberg and later another at the Cour de Rohan, Balthus showed no interest in modernist styles such as Cubism. His paintings often depicted pubescent young girls in erotic and voyeuristic poses. One of the most notorious works from his first exhibition in Paris was The Guitar Lesson (1934), which caused controversy due to its depiction of a sexually explicit lesbian scene featuring a young girl and her teacher. Other important works from the same exhibition included La Rue (1933), La Toilette de Cathy (1933) and Alice dans le miroir (1933).

In 1937 he married Antoinette de Watteville, who was from an old and influential aristocratic family from Bern. He had met her as early as in 1924, and she was the model for the aforementioned La Toilette and for a series of portraits. Balthus had two children from this marriage, Thaddeus and Stanislas (Stash) Klossowski, who recently published books on their father, including the letters by their parents.

Early on his work was admired by writers and fellow painters, especially by André Breton and Pablo Picasso. His circle of friends in Paris included the novelists Pierre Jean Jouve, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Joseph Breitbach, Pierre Leyris, Henri Michaux, Michel Leiris and René Char, the photographer Man Ray, the playwright and actor Antonin Artaud, and the painters André Derain, Joan Miro and Alberto Giacometti (one of the most faithful of his friends). In 1948, another friend, Albert Camus, asked him to design the sets and costumes for his play L'Etat de Siège (The State of Siege, directed by Jean-Louis Barrault). Balthus also designed the sets and costumes for Artaud's adaptation for Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci (1935), Ugo Betti's Delitto all'isola delle capre (Crime on Goat-Island, 1953) and Barrault's adaptation of Julius Caesar (1959-1960).

Champrovent to Chassy

In 1940, with the invasion of France by German forces, Balthus fled with his wife to Savoy to a farm in Champrovent near Aix-les-Bains, where he began his work on two major paintings: Landscape near Champrovent (1942-1945) and The Living Room (1942). In 1942 he moved to Bern and in 1945 to Geneve, where he made friends with the publisher Albert Skira and the writer and member of the French Resistance André Malraux. Balthus returned to France in 1946 and a year later he made a trip with André Masson to Southern France, meeting figures such as Picasso and Jacques Lacan, who eventually became a collector of Balthus' work. In 1950 he designed the stage, together with Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, for a production of the Mozart opera Così fan tutte in Aix-en-Provence. Three years later he moved into the Chateau de Chassy in the Morvan, living with his niece Frédérique Tison and finishing his large-scale masterpieces La Chambre (The Room 1952, possibly influenced by Pierre Klossowski's novels) and La Passage de Commerce Saint-André (1954).

Later life and work

As international fame grew with exhibitions in the gallery of Pierre Matisse (1938) and the Museum of Modern Art (1956) in New York City, he cultivated the image of himself as an enigma. In 1964 he moved to Rome, where he presided (appointed by the French Minister of Culture André Malraux) over the Villa de Medici as director of the French Academy in Rome, and made friends with the filmmaker Federico Fellini and the painter Renato Guttuso.

In 1977 he moved to Rossinière, Switzerland. That he had a second, Japanese wife Setsuko Ideta, whom he married in 1967 and was thirty-five years his junior, simply added to the air of mystery around him (he met her in Japan, during a diplomatic mission also initiated by Malraux). A son, Fumio, was born in 1968 but died only two years later.

The photographers and friends Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck (Cartier-Bresson's wife), both portrayed the painter and his wife and their daughter Harumi (born 1973) in his Grand Chalet in Rossinière in 1999.

Balthus was the only living artist who had his artwork in the Louvre's collection (it came from Picasso's private collection when it was donated to that museum).

Prime Ministers and rock stars alike attended the funeral of Balthus. Bono, lead-singer of U2, sang for the hundreds of mourners at the funeral, including Prince Sadruddhin Aga Khan, supermodel Elle McPherson and Cartier-Bresson.

Influence and legacy

The work of Balthus shows numerous influences, including the writings of Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, and the paintings of Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Simone Martini, Poussin, Jean Etienne Liotard, Joseph Reinhardt, Géricault, Ingres, Goya, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Courbet, Edgar Degas, Félix Vallotton and Paul Cezanne. His favourite composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

His work influenced several artists, among them the filmmaker Jacques Rivette of the French New Wave. His film Hurlevent (1985) was inspired by Balthus' drawings made at the beginning of the 1930s. As he says in an interview with Valerie Hazette: "Seeing as he's a bit of an eccentric and all that, I am very fond of Balthus (...) I was struck by the fact that Balthus enormously simplified the costumes and stripped away the imagery trappings (...)".

A reproduction of a unknown painting by Balthus prominently appeared in François Truffaut's film Domicile Conjugal (Bed & Board, 1970). The two principal characters, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and his wife Christine (Claude Jade), are disputed. Christine takes down from the wall a small drawing of approximately 25 X 25 cm and tightens it to her husband: Christine: -"Hold, take the small Balthus". Antoine: "Ah, the small Balthus. I offered it to you, it's your's, keep it." This drawing introduces at the foreground a dark character (of his back?), in an alley with trees on the left.

Another artist influenced by Balthus is the photographer Duane Michals.

The novel Hannibal by Thomas Harris refers to the fictional Hannibal Lecter as a cousin of Balthus.

Ancestral Debates

From Balthus: A Biography

According to most biographies, Balthus denied having any ethnic Jewish heritage, claiming that biographers had confused his mother's true ancestry. In "Balthus: A Biography" by Nicholas Fox Weber, Weber, who is Jewish, attempts to find common ground whilst interviewing Balthus by bringing up a biographical note that stated Balthus' mother was Jewish. Balthus replied "No, sir, that is incorrect." and went on to explain:

"One of my father's best friends was a painter called Eugen Spiro, who was the son of a cantor. My mother was also called Spiro, but came apparently from a Protestant family in the south of France. One of the Midi Spiros - one of the ancestors - went to Russia. They were likely of Greek origin. We called Eugen Spiro "Uncle" because of the close relationship, but he was not my real uncle. The Protestant Spiros are still in the south of France."

Balthus continued by saying he did not think it was tasteful to forcefully correct these errors, given his many Jewish friends. Nicholas Fox Weber concludes in his biography that Balthus was lying about this "biographical error," though the exact reasoning behind why was never explained. Weber states that the name "Spiro" is only a Greek given name, though this incorrect, as the personal name serves equivalently as a surname.^[1] Balthus consistently repeated that if he, in fact, was Jewish, he would have no problem with it. In support of Weber's view, Balthus did make dubious claims about his ancestry before, once claiming he was descended from Lord Byron on his father's side.

According to Weber, Balthus would frequently add to the story of his mother's ancestry, saying that she was also related to the Romanov, Narischkin, and lesser known Raginet families among others, though, conceedingly, Balthus never claimed his mother's side was from a straight un-mixed lineage, and despite the sensationalism with which Weber says he told these stories and the method in which Weber presents Balthus' claims, Balthus never saw himself as contradictory. The true extent of what Balthus was saying for artistic worth and what he was saying in earnest is unknown as he did not stick seriously to all his claims. Weber never interviewed Balthus' brother, Pierre, in order to confirm or deny Balthus' mother's ancestry, though he did present a quote by Baladine's lover, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in which Rilke states that the Spiros were descended form one of the richest Sephardic-Spanish families. In a seemingly conclusionary note, Weber writes "The artist neglected, however, to tell me that, in the most miserable of ironies, Fumio (Balthus' son) suffered from Tay-Sachs disease." Weber holds this up as evidence that Balthus say lying about not having Jewish ancestry, given Tay-Sachs is a heavily Ashkenazic-Jewish disease. This, ofcourse, conflicts with Rilke's report of the Spiros being Sephardic, which Weber later says was a "Rilke embellishment" and also brings up the relevance of the preponderance of Japanese infantile Tay-Sachs, since Balthus' wife was Japanese.

References and bibliography

• Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, Balthus (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1996)
• Claude Roy, Balthus. (1996)
• Damian Pettigrew, Balthus Through the Looking-Glass (72', Super 16, PLANETE/CNC/PROCIREP, 1996). Major documentary on and with Balthus filmed at work in his studio and in conversation at his Rossinière chalet. Shot over a 12-month period in Switzerland, Italy, France and England, the film captures the painter's unique vision and extraordinary lifestyle. Won UNESCO Grand Prize, Lausanne International Art Festival Best Photography Prize including Official Selection 8th International VU SUR LES DOCS Marseille.
• Nicholas Fox Weber, Balthus, A Biography, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) ISBN 0-679-40737-5
• Gero Von Boehm, The Painter's House. With photographs by Kishin Shinoyama (2000)
• Jean Clair and Virginie Monnier, Balthus: Catalogue Raisonne of the Complete Works. (Editions Gallimard, 2000)
• Alain Vircondelet, Mémoires de Balthus (Editions du Rocher, 2001)
• Jean Clair, Balthus (Thames and Hudson, 2001)
• Balthus. Correspondence amoureuse avec Antoinette de Watteville 1928-1937 (Buchet Chastel, 2001)
• Gilles Neret, Balthus. The King of Cats. (Taschen, 2003)
• Raphaël Aubert, Le Paradoxe Balthus (Editions de la Différence, 2005)

External links

• La Fondation Balthus
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• The Prodigious Century
• An excerpt from the biography by Nicholas Fox Weber
• Obituaries
• A review by Sarah Boxer of Fox Weber's Biography, New York Times, November 28, 1999
• Balthus presents Balthus, an article by Jed Perl
• Jacqueline Ko on Balthus' memoirs Vanished Splendours, as told to Alain Vircondelet, Yale Review of Books, Winter 2005
• Valerie Hazette. Hurlevent: Jacques Rivette's Adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Senses of Cinema, October 2003)