Balthus: A Biography
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$40.00
Description
The first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time -- the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola -- whose brilliantly rendered, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art.
The story of Balthus's life has been shrouded by contradiction and hearsay, most of it his own invention; over the years he created for himself a persona of mystery, aristocracy, and glamour. Now, in Nicholas Fox Weber's superb biography, Balthus, the man and the artist, stands revealed as never before.
He was born in Paris in 1908 to Polish parents. At age twelve he first stepped into the spotlight with the publication of forty of his drawings illustrating a story about a cat by Rainer Maria Rilke, who was then Balthus's mother's lover and a crucial influence on the young boy. From that moment, Balthus has never been out of the public eye.
In 1934 his first exhibition, in Paris, stunned the art world. The seven canvases drew attention to his extraordinary technique -- a mix of tradition and imagination informed by the work of Piero della Francesca, Courbet, and Joseph Reinhardt, but unique to the twenty-six-year-old artist -- and to their provocative content; one of the paintings, The Guitar Lesson, was so powerful in its sadomasochistic imagery that it was deemed necessary to remove it from public display.
Continuously since then, Balthus's work has provoked both great opprobrium and profound admiration -- as has the artist himself, whether collaborating with Antonin Artaud on his Theater of Cruelty, transforming the Villa Medici into the social center of Fellini's Rome in the 1950s, or competing for the artistic limelight with his friends Picasso and André Derain.
The artist's complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its particular immediacy from Weber's long and intense conversations with Balthus -- who never previously consented to discuss his life and work with a biographer -- as well as his interviews with the painter's closest friends, members of his family, and many of the subjects of his controversial canvases.
Weber's critical and human grasp (he acutely analyzes the paintings in terms of both their aesthetic achievement and what they reveal of their maker's psyche), combined with his rich knowledge of Balthus's life and his insight into the ideas and forces that have helped to shape Balthus's work over the past seven decades, gives us a striking, illuminating portrait of one of the most admired and outrageous artists of our time.
Balthus is as multifaceted and spellbinding as its subject, the 20th-century painter whose canvasses have been likened both to those of the ethereal Piero della Francesca and sadomasochistic erotica. Biographer Nicholas Fox Weber quotes Oscar Wilde when discussing Balthus's most notorious painting, in which a music teacher violently molests her young pupil: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.... And so Balthus claimed to me time and again. If viewers find
The Guitar Lesson ... shocking or titillating, repulsive or seductive, they reveal only their own psyches, not his." Balthus repeatedly insisted on noninterpretive, pre-Freudian, stylistic observation of his paintings--mere studies in light and shadow, form and shape, composition and color--or so he would have Weber (and the reader) believe.
Weber describes his own psychological near-seduction by Balthus's proffered confidences, and his brief, initial inclination to allow the artist to dominate their interviews. Despite Balthus's gift for prevarication--romance on short notice is his specialty--Weber is astute enough to sift through every possible document. He elucidates Balthus's mother's long affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; her Jewish ancestry, which Balthus denied; the atmosphere of religious mockery among the surrealists; Balthus's marriages and affairs and his obsession with pubescent girls. As the book progresses, Weber delves deeply into an analysis of the artist's psyche. In the end, he achieves remarkable, sensitive insights into the nature of Balthus's character and subjects. He patiently builds a case for the theory that even the artist's female adolescent models reflect his secret selves and fantasies, developed in reaction to many kinds of childhood pain and confusion.
Weber secures every important painting within a framework of historical reference, personal psychology, and stylistic influence. With this he demonstrates his uniqueness among biographers of artists--he actually understands painting, including its technical aspects. A hugely pleasurable read, this book compares to Hilary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse in its erudition and richness of detail. --Peggy Moorman
Customer Reviews
Vile
if there is one consistant theme in this ponderous book it's the author's unrelenting obsession with exposing Balthus' alleged Jewishness. With access to so many of the great man's intimates as well as being a guest in the artist's home each page is full of missed opportunites to shed real insight into his personality. A life such as Balthus deserved better than this dishonorable treatment by a bottom feeding journalist.
2009-03-26
| countrad (USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1
Ultimate bio on a lucky genius
Success in art ? Not an easy road...In this excellent bio you'll find out how a little nasty detail on the lower left corner of a canvas painted when the artist was only 25 years old, made Balthus into a genius . The book is excellent and Weber completes admirably the Balthus puzzle. Well worth the price to discover the secret in selling your art to the rich and stupid !
2008-05-28
| Not a kid (Boca Raton, FL United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5
The Weber Case
This book has disappointed me greatly.To all the negative reviews displayed here I can only add more... Its apparently well researched subject is just a cover-up for making yet another buck, using an artist who is lesser known, often misunderstood and provocative. Any biography of Balthus would have been appreciated at the time of the artist's old age and the obviously quick aproach of death, and people like Mr. Weber, unfortunately, quite often are the first to write in such moments. This is not a book about Balthus or his life or his art, it is about quickly making a name for himself and some money off Balthus, in the name of his art, when it was still possible. Inaccessability of Balthus the person has allowed only a small circle of friends, family members, and patrons to benefit financially, and socially from Balthus's name and Art, however Mr.Weber, a parvenue as he is, craved for some of it too. The result - is this book, a book about infiltrating oneself ( or trying to) into a privileged society of artists, aristocrats, wealthy collectors, celebs etc. and then - just " telling all" about who they really are: pretenders, liers, perverts and above all - anti-Semites... I only regret three thing about this book: That I have spent money to buy it ( so contributing to the cause of Mr.Weber); that I have read this book ; that we have all here read this book. PS: To my knowledge, there is not a single Novgorod near Pinsk, or anywhere in Belarus, and Mr.Weber was probably alluding to Novogrudok ( Nowogrodek, Navahrudak) about 125km from Minsk. (Weber might have thought that throwing in some obscure town names from Eastern Europe and ambelishing that book with them would make his "research" look more professional)
2001-07-01
| Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 1
Capturing Balthus
This is a superb biography in which the author willingly submits to a cat and mouse game with the husband and wife team of Balthus and Setusko, both of whom seem supremely confident that they can seduce and manipulate the biographer into telling only the tale they feel the world deserves. Like a good psychoanalyst, Weber allows himself to be taken in and then slowly works his way back out, transformed, but intact. There are so many layers to this story that it makes sense for Weber to include his own narrative as a way to contain and to bind. Balthus comes across as a wonderful paradox as Weber experiences him as both tender and sadistic, real and unreal. Perhaps Weber's own propensity for sharing unflattering details of many of the people he meets along the way (a woman fondling her breast during an interview; the outrageously tasteless home of a California collector, are examples) is a natural response to the sadism that Balthus, himself, disowns time and time again. Weber engages in many acts of bravado during the writing of this book and toward the end describes an amazing meeting between Balthus and the author's own two young daughters -- they seem to have been raised with a hearty, self-assurance. At no time does one feel that the author's intrusions are gratuitous. He does a wonderful job of illuminating aspects of Balthus' life, thought,and art, and his psychoanalytic riffs on the paintings ring true and are expressed in a down-to-earth manner. Of course, how could one ever get to the heart of the matter when it comes to Balthus? But in the end, Balthus, the trickster, gets respectfully what he deserves. Certainly it might make him wince, but then for the artist who early on loved to shock, turnabout is fair play. Bravo to Nicholas Fox Weber who allows himself to feel toward his subject a complex set of emotions that when examined helps to capture some truths about this complicated artist.
2000-10-06
(New York City, New York USA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5
Decadence! Oh my!
The story told in this book is not an original one. In fact, it is, in outline, the same story that provided Henry James with his best plots: a prim New Englander, in Europe for a noble cause, is attracted to, but finally repelled by, those decadent Europeans. Nicholas Fox Weber writes his own story, but he shows us how accurately James observed the appeal and the repulsion that a certain kind of European had -- and still has -- for a certain kind of American.
If Lambert Strether, from "The Ambassadors", or the heroine of "The Portrait of a Lady", had written about their own experiences among the rich and sophisticated old-money types from the continent, their stories would have had many similarities to Weber's. At first he is charmed and approving of the old-world manners with which he is received. Balthus is charming. He answers the phone himself! Just slightly distracted, as older people can be, Balthus regales Weber with anecdotes of the famous and infamous celebrities that he has known, and Weber feels blessed. The great artist has deigned to confide in him. He is in the presence not only of great talent, but of great taste as well, and if such a hero includes him at the dinner table, it must be a kind of validation.
It is later that he feels seduced and misled. Balthus has lied! Balthus has invented stories about himself, to seem more romantic and more mysterious! The sophistication of the great houses holds dark secrets... there is a hint of non-noble blood... there is a hint of anti-semitism.... there is a hint that even the lady of the house can commit a faux pas with the queen of Spain! There were parties in Rome which lasted all night, at which seductions may have occurred! Weber is shocked. It may be the world of the great artists, but it is definitely not the world of which a good American would approve.
There is one major difference, though, between this book and the one Lambert Strether would have written. If James' hero had been invited into the home of one of the world's wealthiest men, to see a masterpiece which few people have had a chance to see in the last 50 years, he would have shown gratitude to the man who allowed him into his bedroom. Lambert Strether, if he had seen a box of hemorrhoid medicine on the night table, would have turned his eyes away with discretion, and made no mention of it to anyone. Yet this is the detail that Weber uses as the climax of the scene, and it is not the only lurid one that seems to hold a fascination for him. When you finish reading this book, what stays in your mind is not a new understanding of Balthus' background, and still less a new look at Balthus' art. What you remember is the roll of flab around Claus von Bulow's middle, or the lovely interviewee who fondles herself.
This is not a book about Balthus. It is about Weber and his disapproval. He should have named it "Lifestyles of the Rich and Slimy". It sure was fun to read.
2000-08-15
(Higashi Ku, Hiroshima Japan) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 1
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Picasso and the cubists, Balthus, Bosch, Bocklin, Beckmann and many more can be seen in various pieces. The overriding sense of the work is a fun loving and optimistic approach to making art and experiencing the world around us.
NetplosivSammlung Pietzsch ab Mitte Juni in Neuer Nationalgalerie zu sehenDie Sammlung Pietzsch zählt zu den herausragenden internationalen Privatsammlungen der Klassischen Moderne und umfasst Gemälde von Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Balthus, Hans Bellmer oder Paul Delvaux sowie Werke von Jackson Pollock, Marc Rothko und Willhelm Sammlung Pietzsch in Neuer Nationalgalerie