UNDERSTANDING BALTHUS

A friend had told me to go and see the Balthus at the Gagosian Gallery. I love the gallery but Balthus because of who he was and what he painted has always left me a little cold. Why is that? My Mother knew his brother, Pierre Klossowski quite well and had frequently dined with his wife Denise and family friends who for some of them, are  no longer of this world.  One dinner party she took photos of P.K. He was virtually blind at that point. I still have the photos and the little book she made for his wife Denise and the friends in question. They were « needy » at the end of his life even if P.K was a recognized painter and philosopher. His paintings were very android and ambiguous, but he certainly didn’t have the same reputation as his brother Balthus. I think at the end of P.K.’s life when his brother could have helped him out but didn’t. This left my Mother speechless and cold toward the famous artist that everyone knows. So I was a little biased when I went off to see his retrospective. 

He was known to be a reclusive painter of charged and disquieting scenes and certainly of his paintings of adolescence









However, I must say that I really liked his Paris Streets and ink drawings. They are timeless realism. His work is very realistic but the ink drawings fascinated me















as did a couple of water colors done in the surroundings of a medieval caste near where he lived.




He was self taught but has a long history of success with major exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, the Biennale of Venice, Chicago, Tokyo….and could not have had such events unless his work was really appreciated. I like it a little more today.

Commentaires

Michael Keane a dit…
This artist's work is certainly provocative, but it has a strange dream-like quality which is unique and recognisable. It seems to me that PK was greatly influenced by his brother. I remember seeing PK's film featuring his wife and parallel bars one afternoon in a tiny cinema in Paris with Catherine.
14/2/15 03:28
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