SHARING WITH ME

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 retrospe

I still felt stunned by the INSIDE exhibition. Either I am going to reject these installations from now on, or go to see some of them with Jerome and Laurent. They don’t like everything either, but when they do, their arguments are quite convincing. No-one at the Guimet museum either. It’s a charming centre and the effort should or could be made to come more often. « The Splendors des Han » was marked down in my « to see list » and it could only be very much better than what I had just been through. 

It was of course.  Looking down on the first gallery The poster for the exhibition I Have always loved this I don’t pretend to know much about this dynasty ((209BC-9AC) except that anytime I look at it, everything seems to be modern, so well preserved and sophisticated. The excavations and research that has been done in China goes to show how advanced these populations were. Maybe it’s a very good thing that they sent to much with their dead to go on living on the « othe