Balthus

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i think he is more elegant and complex then the aristo pedo rep he has been given , esp. hs vastly underrated graphite drawings of men and his pen and ink sketches of trees , he calles them etudes . like chopin . so what do you all think ?

― anthony, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

new pedo or not answers

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

also he = hannibal lecter's cousin!!

― mark s, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

He was married to a Japanese woman, Keiko.

I think an interest in Asian women is similar to homosexuality. It's a refusal of the bio-geographical sexual destiny which says 'Thou shalt choose from the females in your immediate gene pool and associated bus route network'.

Which is the same refusal (with a different outcome) made by a gay person. By stripping love of its pragmatic biological function, we make it pure. I suppose a similar argument could be made for the love of little girls and boys (about which Plato and the Greeks knew a thing or two) but that's not where I want to go today.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

but what about the art ? i really want to know what you think of the drawings momus

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anthony, your rep precedes you.

― N., Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

whats my rep ?

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

For being a sex maniac.

― N., Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You may be right about the drawings being under-rated, because I can't remember having seen them. They either left no lasting impression, or they were suppressed. I think this is because, for most people, Balthus is, as Matthew Collings puts it, 'soft porn for literary people'. His paintings are literary, as narrative as Norman Rockwell, though with a metaphysical frisson closer to Edward Hopper or de Chirico.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, Balthus was married to a Japanese woman but from what I gather from the info at the exhibition I saw in Venice this month, he had all sorts of lovers. He didn't make a song and dance about 'bio- geographical sexual destiny' (I assume he had better things to do and less cause to rationalise to total strangers). Also, when he finally got hitched to this nice woman, he didn't cheat on her once.

There were a lot of stark b/w quotes where he did try to rationalise his attraction to the adolescent by saying he always wanted to be twelve himself (and yes The Guitar Lesson featured in this exhibition). But what I came away with was how ridiculously well-connected he had been, and how cosseted, in a way that just doesn't seem to happen any more. The art was fine; I've always liked it...

― suzy, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

did the venice show the last painintg , the one with the raven ? I have heard some things about it but have yet to see it . And you were right about being connected , i have a clipping somewhere about his 90th birthday , invited were bono,several rothschilds,catherine denuve and julien schanbel. I have become obsessed w. his drawings latley , ostly the ones of birches and a series of studies of winter scenes in french villages , they are so elegant and almost displaced and look like vuillard w/o the color , and yes i know i spelt vuillard wrong .

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Now I have no problem with that, but it does put Balthus in the box marked 'painterly reactionaries' or the box marked 'illustrators', so people who really love 20th century art tend to dismiss him. Your attempt to big up his drawings for their formal qualities is actually part of many revisionist attempts to answer these criticisms, and I think these revisionist counter-claims are rooted in embarrassment about what Balthus was really about, which is something literary and provocative. Look at the writings of his brother Pierre Klossowski and you'll find the same sensibility: erotic, mystical, aristocratic, with an odd balance of daring themes and rather fusty technique.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think an interest in Asian women is similar to homosexuality

Yes, dear.

― RickyT, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think an interest in Asian women is similar to homosexuality

so Momus, i'm going out with a half asian man. does that mean i am similar to half a lesbian?

― katie, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I assume he had better things to do and less cause to rationalise to total strangers

Better watch out there, Suze, you're dissing the whole interweb including yourself. Although you tend to add to 'rationalising to total strangers' the nasty habit of personalising the rationalisations of others... to total strangers.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

so Momus, i'm going out with a half asian man. does that mean i am similar to half a lesbian?

Yes. That'll be $250 please.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think his paintings are dull, they are painted well and contain elemnts of hermetic mystery but msot of that is over shadowed by a desperate want to fuck prepubscents . This is not transgression but regression, a want to treclaim an idyllic childhood that never really happened . Much my same problem with Narnia . I have read some of his brothers work but not enough for that to add to my perspective .

― anthonyeaston, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mental picture: skinny man with head up arse, being hoop-and-sticked down the road by Japanese ex-girlfriends who got together and formed a relay team in Vivian Girls mode. And just occasionally the stick pokes somewhere it shouldn't oughter...and muffled screams emanate from the 'hoop'.

Damn, I wish I had Photoshop on this computer...

― suzy, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

what other pearls of wisdom do you have to cast my way today Mr. Momus?

― katie, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tell me about your mother.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wowsers! I *am* a half-asian man so that makes me semi-attractive to lesbians! Halfway there!

― N., Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, semi-attractive to semi-lesbians, Nick.

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've got some Puerto Rican girls just dying to meet you, Momus.

― Mick Jagger, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Haven't they guessed my name yet?

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The best trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he wasn't Momus.

― N., Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Balthazar Klossowski de Rola=Balthus
Nicholas Currie=Momus
Bathus painting=The Guitar Lesson
Momus song=The Guitar Lesson
Balthus portrays and dates Japanese women
Momus portrays and dates Japanese women
Momus and Balthus never seen in a room together=coincidence?

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The first 'connection' doesn't seem very compelling evidence.

― N., Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually it could all be explained by the fact that I'm an epigone and a copycat.

http://www.m-w.com/tools/search/images/dict1.gif

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nick = Bowie casualty

Bowie = Balthus casualty

Anthony: yes, the 'raven' painting was there. It had a more intense colour than the others, suggesting to me that Balthus' sight beginning to go.

Hey Nick! Your luck might be in; Balthus and Keiko had a daughter. But she must be 30 by now and have a brain, so...never mind ;-p

― suzy, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why you pervidulous trachyfrump!

http://www.m-w.com/tools/search/images/dict1.gif

― Momus, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is where the resemblance between Hanley and Momus becomes startling.

― Kara Fig, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Don't you mean 'perfidious', o genius of many gifts?

― suzy, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

well, that was annoying.

― ethan, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

can we talk aobut the art ?

― anthony, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sadly, I think it's gone beyond that, Anthony. I can't remember having seen any ov Balthus' art (poss there is something in Tachen books' "erotica universalis") and I will look it out.

I wish I was similar to half a lesbian. It sounds like a lot of fun to me.

― Norman Phay, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

not if you're the bottom half!

― ethan, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You're stupid for an old man aren't you?

― Sarah, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The best trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he wasn't Momus.

Well, Momus better steer clear of visiting Inglis, Florida anytime soon..

― Brian MacDonald, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

momus != balthus as not h.lecter's cousin QED

― mark s, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

his later paintings were much more gestural and vivid , jed perl suggested the same thing in a v. well written article in ( was it modern painters or frieze or soemthing else ) any ways there was a reallyu quite elegant raven painting v. early in his career painted with these ochres and greys , there was a girl in it and she looked dead , had a pallor , i wanted to compare it to that .

― anthony, Wednesday, 30 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

e.hopper vs chopin.///i like that description.

― Stringent Stepper (Stringent), Thursday, 29 January 2004 11:04 (twenty-two years ago)

As well as the soft porn for the cultivated angle, and the you-have-to-suppress-the-porn-angle-in-order-to-talk-about-form angle, I've been wondering if there's another angle.

Maybe its the paedo mind that's so fascinating about these pictures, rather than the paedo content. Like serial killer flix, where you get pleasure from the violence and the cruelty, but you also get pleasure from the insight into the killer's mind. Could Balthus be interesting for that?

― run it off (run it off), Thursday, 29 January 2004 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

His work is OK, but in my opinion slightly dull. In the vein of illustratve art with submerged erotic narratives I much prefer Paula Rego.

But I think it's a shame to talk about paedophilia or porn, even soft porn, in relation to such exceptionally discreet art as Balthus's paintings of young girls. He was still painting them when he was probably past erection age, and my impression with all his art is that beauty came first with him ahead of the beast of sex. We're in an age where it's become impossible to accept that a man may simply find young girls beautiful without exsperiencing an urge to abuse or manipulate them.

― R the bunged up with jollop of V (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 29 January 2004 13:21 (twenty-two years ago)

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