Balthus

Jean Clair

Editions

Review

A warning!  I’m a great fan of Balthus’ work, so you had better be prepared for a flurry of superlatives!

Following the painter’s death in February 2001, the exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice from September 2001 until January 2002 has inevitably taken on the nature of a retrospective of the career of this extraordinary maestro and if in the 200 and more works on show there are some gaps (for example there are no works from the “Fruit D’Or” series from his most fruitful periods - no pun intended there, by the way) it still must rank as the most significant account of his talent in decades.

Firm details of his past are scant for such a luminary and one is therefore grateful to the current volume for its brief summary, particularly in view of the opportunities lost by Nicolas Fox Webber, his recent biographer, who, having gained access to the great recluse, unilaterally withdrew from interviews on the grounds that he felt manipulated by his subject and was obliged therefore to rely on earlier sources, which Balthus, a lifelong dissembler and mythomaniac, already controlled.  What a waste!

The point, however, while we await a definitive life, is the chance to revisit and revel in the paintings of this edgy genius with his penchant for the naked form, almost always of prepubescent girls, in disturbing situations.  The thrilling recreation of the gallery in Paris with 6 out of the 7 paintings here reassembled for the first time since they were shown in 1934, and which sensationally established his reputation, is certainly one of the highlights of the show.  So too is the thrill of seeing “La Victime”, dated 1939-46, one of the greatest nudes of the 20th Century, and on loan from a private collection (French, I suspect), breathtaking in scale and simplicity.

Colour reproduction, critical to capture Balthus’ textured brushwork, is on the whole pretty good and the production worthy of this epic show.

If you really want to spoil yourself however, I suggest the complete Balthus: Catalogue Raisonné hbk £140, a model of its kind and with the cover (almost life size), of one of the greatest images of self-portraiture ever produced. - review by Stewart Grimshaw