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It seemed preordained that Balthasar Klossowski, later known simply as Balthus, would become an artist. He was born in Paris. His father was a painter as well as a stage and costume designer. His mother painted too, and cast herself in the role of muse (though not of her husband–they separated when Balthus and his brother Pierre were children). Balthus’s mother Baladine, as she poetically renamed herself, became the lover of family friend Rainer Maria Rilke. When young Balthus made forty clever drawings which told the story of a beloved pet cat, Rilke had the pictures published in a book for which he wrote the introduction. Balthus remained enamored with cats his whole life. He remembered his childhood romantically—a magic time often spent in the mountains of Beatenberg, Switzerland, a landscape that he never forgot.
The family moved in circles that included Pierre Bonnard, André Gide and Jean Cocteau. Bonnard, Rilke and others gave Balthus advice and encouragement. He applied to the State Academy of Fine Art in Berlin, but was rejected. Most of what he learned about art was self-taught. He picked up drawing and painting by copying masterpieces in the Louvre, and later from Renaissance art he saw in Italy. He loved Courbet and emulated his style. His rejection of modernism didn’t endear Balthus to critics and collectors. It would be decades before his lovingly crafted figures set in precise interiors would be appreciated by a larger audience. All along, many other artists saw the value of his art. Among his friends were Man Ray, Antoine de Saint-Exupére, Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti.
As a young man, Balthus spent much of his time painting in a Paris attic. Like his father, he also did work for theaters, designing and painting sets for the likes of Albert Camus and Antonin Artaud. In 1930 he spent 14 months in Morocco in the French military. During World War II he served a less pleasant stint in the military— he was wounded in the leg and traumatized by having to clear human remains off of battle fields. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was discharged. The thing he had feared most was loosing his sight on the battlefield.
Balthus was extremely private and, like many artists, disliked talking about the meanings of his paintings. He once sent a telegram to a gallery that said: “NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS: BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS KNOWN. NOW LET US LOOK AT THE PICTURES. REGARDS. B.” His paintings are a charming mix of naïve and classical. He painted street scenes and many portraits, both personal and for income. He called the portraits he did just for money “monsters” and disliked doing them. He seemed to make some of them purposely unattractive and made the subjects sit in uncomfortable, straight-backed chairs. When he painted someone he liked, like Joan Miró and his daughter, he painted with interest and delicacy. Balthus’s art was personal, intense and unstylish for that time (Abstract Expressionism was au courant). His slightly stiff figures and the not-quiet-realistic style (sometimes verging on cartoonish) give his work an “outsider” look. He had no formal training, after all. He had difficulty selling his art.
A topic he painted again and again were young girls who were just on the cusp of womanhood. In 1939 he began painting a young girl named Thérèse Blanchard, whom he met in the neighborhood. She wasn’t particularly attractive, and didn’t smile when she posed, but there was something about her that Balthus related to and was compelled by. He painted her more times than anyone else. Balthus’s interest in painting young girls (who often posed with childish ease— legs sprawled, a glimpse of underwear visible) has raised an eyebrow or two. One woman who posed for him when she was a girl said that each time she posed, her skirt had to come up a little higher. None of his models seemed to feel uncomfortable or threatened—perhaps at worst they were bored. Another former model said he didn’t even seem to be there as he painted, his focus on the work was so intense. The model was a conduit, the painting was where he saw magic. Balthus stood firm his whole life: there was nothing sexual about these paintings. If the viewer saw something sexual in it, that was their issue. He didn’t like critics reading into his work, and felt psychoanalysis had done great harm in the world. Later in life he said he felt that young girls were sacred, untouchable. Like Lewis Carroll, he worshiped their youth and innocence. Balthus said he didn’t discover “Alice In Wonderland,” but had known her always.
His one intentionally sexual work, “The Guitar Lesson,” came to be a painting he regretted making. He had intended it to provoke and enrage. In spite of his claims that they were quite innocent, many of Balthus’s paintings provoked and enraged. This was particularly true in his old age when times had changed and awareness of child abuse was more pronounced. His first solo show in 1934 caused a small scandal, in no small part because of “The Guitar Lesson.”
Less controversial was Balthus’s love of cats. Many of his paintings include frolicking or napping cats. He called himself the “King of Cats” in a self portrait he painted and gave to his good friend Margrit Alice Molyneaux, which she kept her whole life. He made a painting of his friend Sheila Pickering inscribed “Princess of Cats.” The title “Queen of Cats” was reserved for Antoinette de Watteville, Balthus’s first love, and later wife. They were married in 1937 and had two sons, Stanislas and Thaddeus. Echoing his parents, Balthus and de Watteville separated about ten years later, but remained lifelong friends. As an adult, Thaddeus said that his father had spent little time with him and his brother. He said Balthus had a quick temper and there were theatrical encounters with tax inspectors being thrown down stairs and fist fights.
In 1946 Balthus had two major shows that went virtually unnoticed. Few people at the time were interested in his strange, seemingly outdated paintings. In the 1950’s, Balthus moved to a mountainous region of France into an old chateau surrounded by trees. Five sympathetic collectors and friends who believed in the worth of his art supported him. He paid them back with the paintings he created.
From 1962 to 1977 Balthus took a post as art ambassador of France. He lived in Rome and spent his time doing administrative work, traveling and giving parties. Not surprisingly, he made little art during this era and the intensity and passion of his earlier work more or less came to an end. He made about 10 paintings in sixteen years; pastel, pretty and frivolous. Interestingly, these works were popular and sold well. In 1962 (at age fifty-four) he met his future wife, nineteen-year-old art student Setsuko Ideta while on an official visit to Japan. They had a son, Fumio, who died in infancy and later a daughter, Harumi, who became a jewelry designer. His son Thaddeus tells an interesting story about how when Harumi was a rebellious teenager, she kept sneaking out at night to go to parties. The befuddled Balthus asked his adult son what he thought he should do and said, “I don’t understand young girls at all!”
In his later years Balthus became more receptive to journalists, but stubbornly would never talk about the meaning of his work. The mystery of his art was for him alone, and maybe even he did not fully understand what they meant. Perhaps something in his disjointed, unstable, but enchanted childhood always shone through. Maybe it was his attempt to recapture his own lost youth, a carefree and magic time (at least in memory). In adult life the horror of war, the harsh reality of survival and a troubled marriage did not comfort him like the carefree trips with his mother and Rilke to the mountains of Switzerland. Balthus lived to the ripe age of ninety-three. The rock star Bono sang at his funeral, which was attended by Jacques Chirac, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elle MacPherson. His petulant child-friend Thérèse remains, daydreaming perhaps about playing outside, or the day she had at school or about the sadness of misspent youth.
©2016 Alice DuBois
For More information See:
- "Balthus: Cats and Girls" By Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, 1984
- "Balthus" H.N. Abrams, 1996
- "Balthus The Painter" BBC Documentary directed by Mark Kidel, 1996
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