September 14, 2003
Balthus
Over at philosophical conversations Trevor has introduced Pierre Klossowski into the conversation. He has done so in relation to a book Klossowski wrote on Friedrich Nietzsche.
I want to make a loose link here. Klossowski had a brother who was a painter called Balthus (nee Balthazar Klossowski de Rola). He died recently.
This is called The Studio. It was painted in 1934.
That was a time painting was the centre of the art world if not culture.
Today that is no longer so. Painting is just another kind of media.
Balthus was a figurative artist who was opposed to all forms of abstraction. He resisted the fashion of the day and remained true to traditional techniques and subjects.
His draughtsmanship is incisive and of great precision.
Despite this traditionalism an element of menace haunts many of Balthus's paintings and his work has always presented something of an enigma.
Balthus, The Street
Balthus is better known for his disturbing and erotic works of girls on the verge of womanhood. He shocks, and he does so with a simple and personal vocabulary.
But that is another post.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 14, 2003 09:14 AM | TrackBackGary, you need to put an extra
in your code somewhere, as the second photo has an overlap.
That Balthus picture irritates me. Something about it suggests that, for someone apparently opposed to abstraction, he still wasn't particularly interested in presenting three-dimensional realism. The child with the racquet and the man with the plank have an odd flatness to them, which is a kind of abstraction itself...
Posted by: James Russell on September 15, 2003 09:19 PMJames,
The work does irritate.
It is not academic painting that copies the world masters.
Most have been disturbed by the boy groping the girl on the left foreground.
Is not the irritation the way into the picture?
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on September 16, 2003 12:17 PMı want to some informations about balthus
Posted by: şakir on November 4, 2004 07:10 PM