ARTIST: Baltus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola was born February 29, 1908, to parents who were of the Polish
aristocracy. In his early youth he moved with his family to Paris and began a brilliant career as a
painter. Today he is the thirty-third director of the French Academy in Rome.Largely self-taught,
Balthus, as he is known today, had frequent access to such artists as Bonnard, Derain, and
Roussel, for both his parents were themselves artists. He learned much from his circle but drew
as well from the works of Courbet and Seurat, both of whom were dead before he was born, and
from the Old Masters he copied at the Louvre. At twelve he published his first work: illustrations
for a story about his cat Mitsou with a foreword written by Rainer Maria Rilke who had early
seen the child's talent. By 1933 he had allied himself with the Surrealist movement through his
friendship with Giacometti and Antonin Artaud. While his style was certainly not itself
surrealistic, there were definite affinities with this movement both in his personality and his
approach. Two years later when he painted his now famous portraits of Derain and Miro, 1 the
previous contacts in his life began to congeal into a personal style.Over the years Balthus has
been a highly consistent worker and, largely, a recluse. He has been, in the words of Albert
Camus, a "patient and clairvoyant swimmer, . . .[toiling] up strange rivers toward forgotten
sources.”2 The strange rivers are those streams of conscious and unconscious thought which
Munch before him had explored: those deep and occasionally fetid quagmires of human
emotion.Balthus, who personally had a lonely childhood, was deeply aware of the torments of
adolescence, and the adolescent for him became a symbol of emergent yet frequently pent-up
emotion. The children of his paintings are introspective, preoccupied with themselves,
mysterious, and frequently slightly evil. Having spent hours by himself as a youth, he knows the
whims and aggressive independence that such isolation breeds. He has, even as an adult, never
stopped feeling the emotions of childhood.The Living Room (fig. 1)3 is one of Balthus' most
impressive and important paintings. Begun in 1941 it was left, unfinished, as the artist was
dissatisfied with its progress. In 1942 he painted a second version (fig. 2) trying to resolve his
problems, but upon its completion he returned to the first canvas and, making some subtle
changes, completed it in 1943 with superb results.At first glance The Living Room is a simple,
almost innocuous painting. But like all of Balthus' great works it is somehow compelling; it has a
haunting sense of mystery about it that lures one back. It can not be so simple. It is not.Balthus is
first and foremost a master of composition. Everything in this painting is exactly where and how
the artist intended it to be; nothing is left to chance. The left arms of both girls have been moved
from their original positions, but these changes have not been completely obscured. These
pertimenti show us not only the artist's thought process but serve to give a sense of life and
movement to a basically static scene. Originally, too, there was a third figure on the right edge of
the canvas, but this was obviously superfluous to the artist's intention and has been replaced with
the heavy and silent piano.The mood here is one of mysterious tension. What should be an idyllic
interior is somehow unnerving and fraught with impending violence. The awkward grace of the
girl reading so intensely in the foreground is contrasted with the limpness of her sister who
indulges herself in sensuous reveries as suggested by her pose. While in physical proximity, the
girls are worlds apart. They are as opposite from each other as are the Victorian furnishings from
the classic architecture of the room itself. It is the introvert versus the extrovert; the scholar
versus the hedonist.Dominating the center of the painting is the bowl of fruit, symbolic of ideal
balance and order. It is suggestive of the harmony and beauty that we are made to feel are
lacking in the waking relationship between the two girls. It exists, stoically isolated on the table,
and balanced precariously, even ambiguously, near the edge.The variant of this work (fig. 2) not
only makes ambiguous the sex of one of the figures, introducing a further complication and
erotic element, but includes a cat which for Balthus frequently serves to suggest stealth, evil, and
the destruction of innocence. It is apparent in our version, however, that this fillip is basically
unnecessary to the success of the scene, and it is perhaps for this reason that the artist returned to
his original composition and completed it with such staggering force.Endnotes
1. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
2. Art News, 61, No. 2 (April, 1962), pp. 36 ff.
3. 66.66. The John R. Van Derlip Fund. Oil on canvas, 44 3/4 inches x 58 inches. Signed
and dated in the lower left: 1941-43.
Referenced Works of Art
1. Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola)
French, 20th century
The Living Room, 1941-43
Oil on canvas, 44 3/4 inches x 58 inches
The John R. Van Derlip Fund, 66.66
2. Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola)
French, 20th century
The Living Room
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York