Word: balthus
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...BALTHUS-Thaw, 50 East 78th. Sketchily inconsequential ink illustrations for Wuthering Heights from the early 1930s, along with other drawings on view for the first time, show the director of the Villa Medici playing erotic games in line as well as color. Through...
Rooms at the Top. The big four are by no means the only places in Manhattan to buy a masterwork. For certain living masters-Miró, Giacometti or Balthus, for instance-the place to go is the gallery owned by Pierre Matisse, son of Painter Henri Matisse. The Perls Galleries represent Calder and Archipenko, and they do a reputable business in "painters of the Picasso generation" like Braque, Modigliani, Soutine and Utrillo. Catherine Viviano on East 57th Street is strong on modern Italians like Afro and Cremonini, but she also represents the surrealist Kay Sage and the estate...
Unnerving Mood. Despite such distinguished tutelage. Balthus chose to find his chief mentor in the 19th century realist Gustave Courbet, who said: "Create a suggestive magic that contains both the object and the subject, the world outside the artist and the artist himself." But Balthus was also entranced by the surrealists' probings into the unconscious. He painted streets, landscapes and people, all arranged in a well-thought-out design, all strangely still and silent, all a little unnerving in mood...
...Twelve. These canvas Lolitas have aroused much arch speculation, which Balthus turns aside by jokingly pointing out that he was born in a leap year, and that "having had only twelve birthdays, I may consider myself only twelve years old." Outwardly, this man of twelve is every inch the worldly aristocrat who can converse brilliantly, if somewhat distractedly, in French, Italian, German and English. He is the most painstaking of artists: he may require as many as 40 sittings for a portrait, turns out only about five new canvases a year...
...forget. His young girls lounge and stretch themselves, shift uncomfortably as if painfully in doubt about what to do with their newly awakened bodies. What makes them distasteful and at the same time affecting is that the artist himself seems to know exactly the secret of their torment. Balthus' other creatures are equally painful; they share streets and rooms, but they do not speak or even take notice of one another. They fascinate the viewer not by anything they do but simply by what they are-absolutely and agonizingly alone...