Balthus by Nicholas Fox Weber

Author:Nicholas Fox Weber [Weber, Nicholas Fox]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-35276-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

“IF YOU LOOK INTO A MUSEUM catalog today, you see immediately that something is lost,” Balthus allowed in the course of his ruminations on the sofa of the main salon one afternoon. “From the moment one doesn’t look anymore, it becomes boring. A research of something personal, the deliberate quest for originality, is one of the main weaknesses.” The chief problem, Balthus insisted, derived from “that necessity to make something astonishing.”

The observation was as duplicitous as it was intriguing. Because even if Balthus was justified in regarding himself as an artist who started with the observation of life, there has rarely been an artist so singularly personal in his approach or so bent on originality.

Surely Balthus knew that his art has had such success because of its unique psychological impact. It does, indeed, derive from nature, and much of it is well painted, but the “something personal” is the main reason Balthus’s work ultimately became better known and more popular than Derain’s—and continues to fetch significantly higher prices.

It was as if by criticizing certain characteristics—another person’s manipulativeness, someone’s immersion in his own psyche—Balthus intended to prevent me from realizing the extent to which those selfsame traits applied to him.

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