Author: Stent, Angela File Type: epub []

Author: Nicholas Fox Weber File Type: epub 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 Balthuss 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 Webers 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 Balthuss mothers 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 -- amix 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, Balthuss 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 Fellinis Rome in the 1950s, or competing for the artistic limelight with his friends Picasso and Andre Derain. The artists complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its particular immediacy from Webers 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 painters closest friends, members of his family, and many of the subjects of his controversial canvases. Webers critical and human grasp (he acutely analyzes the paintings in terms of both their aesthetic achievement and what they reveal of their makers psyche), combined with his rich knowledge of Balthuss life and his insight into the ideas and forces that have helped to shape Balthuss work over the past seven decades, gives us a striking, illuminating portrait of one of the most admired and outrageous artists of our time.**Amazon.com ReviewBalthus 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 Balthuss 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 Balthuss proffered confidences, and his brief, initial inclination to allow the artist to dominate their interviews. Despite Balthuss gift for prevarication--romance on short notice is his specialty--Weber is astute enough to sift through every possible document. He elucidates Balthuss mothers long affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke her Jewish ancestry, which Balthus denied the atmosphere of religious mockery among the surrealists Balthuss marriages and affairs and his obsession with pubescent girls. As the book progresses, Weber delves deeply into an analysis of the artists psyche. In the end, he achieves remarkable, sensitive insights into the nature of Balthuss character and subjects. He patiently builds a case for the theory that even the artists 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 Spurlings The Unknown Matisse in its erudition and richness of detail. --Peggy MoormanFrom Publishers Weekly A highly regarded art historian (Patron Saints), Weber ingeniously structures his biography of 91-year-old Balthazar Klossowska, or Balthus, by draping his voluminous investigations over facts that emerged during his visit with the famously reclusive painter and his Japanese wife at their elegant Swiss chalet in 1991. A French citizen of Polish ancestry who has claimed descent from Polish nobility, the Romanovs and Lord Byron, Balthus survived a childhood of economic hardship and displacement with the help of his mothers lover, poet Ranier Maria Rilke. In his work, Balthus uses Old Master coloring to depict scenes in canvases whose atmospheric haze and violated figures (many of them highly eroticized adolescents) belie the compositions sturdy grids. Weber explores Balthuss many influences, from the work of Piero della Francesca to psychoanalytic theory and his brothers fascination with the Marquis de Sade. Again and again, Weber insists that the artist articulate the intentions behind each and every element in his work. Of course, no painter could, and Balthus, whether from age, puckishness or the sincere conviction that his art must speak for itself, toys with Weber throughout their conversations. The friction between the two forces Weber to do his ownAat times heroicAresearch. Whether visiting a sex crimes unit in Manhattan, the New York apartment of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos or an acquaintance from Balthuss days as director of the French Academy in Rome, Weber assiduously records the evidence for his psychosexual view of Balthuss paintings. In the process, Weber does justice to both the artist and his art. If he occasionally adopts a gossipy tone, thats a minor flaw in a book that will remain a splendid account of a complex life and as fine an artists biography as this season is likely to produce. 16 color plates not seen by PW 116 b&w illus. First serial to the New Yorker. U.K rights, Weidenfeld &Nicholson. Reader Subscriptions Book Club selection. (Oct.) 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.