Balthus, Vanished Splendors, cover

Balthus, Thérèse Dreaming, 1938, oil on canvas,
collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

A secretive painter who defied lables

By Dan Tranberg

Known to the world simply as "Balthus," Balthazar Klossowski was among the most enigmatic painters of the 20th century. Born in Paris in 1908, he spent the bulk of his life secluded from the public, produced some 350 paintings and 1,600 drawings and died in February 2001, 10 days before his 93rd birthday.

Though his paintings, which often depict girls in various states of undress, can be found in some of the world's greatest museums, he remains an ambiguous figure whose work never really fit into any major school or movement.

Some critics tried briefly to align him with the surrealists, because of the dreamlike quality of his images, but the artist vehemently rejected this. Others thought his work verged on pornographic, which, again, he strongly denied.

So, who was Balthus? What was his deal?

"Vanished Splendors," the posthumously published memoir he dictated to French journalist Alain Vircondelet, provides some answers but is far from a juicy tell-all. Through its breezy, stream-of-consciousness narrative, he emerges as a man earnestly trying to secure a sense of dignity and respect. By and large, it works.

Balthus came from an intellectually privileged environment. His father was a Polish art historian, painter and critic whose close friends included Andre Gide and Pierre Bonnard. Two years after his parents separated in 1917, his mother became the lover of poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Under Rilke's tutelage, the young Balthus began to flourish as an artist. In 1921, when he was only 12, Balthus published a book of 40 drawings with a preface by Rilke.

But although his early ties to the European intelligentsia obviously helped him, Balthus spends much of "Vanished Splendors" describing his personal life as a spiritual search rather than a climb to celebrity.

"I cultivated the taste for a certain secrecy not in order to make myself important or attract galleries or collectors, but because the path of silence and withdrawal is the only one that allows access to art's secrets," he says.

Describing himself as "a very strict Catholic" but "not a Catholic painter," he continuously portrays himself as being on a quest for truth.

Regarding his frequent use of pubescent girls as subjects, Balthus says, "I've always had a naive natural complicity with young girls," and "I always reject stupid interpretations that my young girls are the product of an erotic imagination."

These statements are bound to raise eyebrows, and they undoubtedly contain some amount of denial. But as much as Balthus refuses to accept the erotic implications of his images, the integrity of his overall agenda as an artist is believable.

In fact, the most pleasurable passages of the book are those in which Balthus is not defending himself or trying to set the record straight, but instead reveling in the magical process of making art.

In the end, he remains mysterious. Nonetheless, he stands as a painter whose ardent devotion to the life of a secluded artist continues to intrigue.

Vanished Splendors: A Memoir
By Balthus, as told to Alain Vircondelet
Ecco Press, 272 pp., $29.95.

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This article appeared in The Plain Dealer, January 19, 2003

© 2007 Dan Tranberg. All rights reserved.