By Isao Takahata, Japan
For some painters, you just casually glance at one of his paintings and don't want to get close to them anymore. Such is the case with Balthus. Just by looking at the cover of his album, I was already far away from him - the painting depicts a young girl with a disgustingly realistic brushwork, and a little shadow of underwear can be seen between her raised legs. Unexpectedly, just recently, I unexpectedly encountered this work. The original painting is said to be a masterpiece with a width of 3.3 meters, but what I saw was only a small picture online. Even so, I felt the sharp impact. Then it must be a famous masterpiece in the history of art. I have never noticed a painter who can paint such works.
I quickly borrowed a few albums from the library. Some paintings are really annoying. However, many of his works, starting with this "Room" and "Saint-Andre Commercial Street", have a time-frozen, silent and strange charm. The landscape paintings are pretty good too. I can't help but want to see the original painting. After Balthus married his wife Setsuko Yamada, for more than ten years starting in 1967, his painting style showed a surprising Japanese style, such as "Japanese Woman in Front of the Black Mirror". No Japanese painter can paint this kind of feeling - lines, planes, spaces, and the thoroughly polished textures and figures that only true Western painters can show.
Friends may laugh at you: What, why are you just saying this now? However, missing many opportunities to appreciate his paintings, on the other hand, also means a kind of happiness. No matter when, whether you are old or not, there will always be new encounters and fresh surprises. If you want to appreciate his paintings, your first choice is "Balthus Paintings" compiled by Jean Leymarie (translated by Iwasaki, LIBRO Press, 1998). I am satisfied with the selection and explanation of the works, and I can appreciate the essence of Balthus's paintings.
Balthus is a painter prone to secular controversy. In the 1930s, being accused of "obscenity" was inevitable. Because in "Guitar Lesson" and some works, he uses the "subconscious nudity" of adolescent girls (Watanabe's first chapter) to tease viewers and let them experience a "childish sexiness"; or to give a picture of a girl His nude painting is titled "The Sacrifice" and also depicts images of unsuspecting adolescent girls... All of which allow viewers to view his works in a sexual way. This view also stood out when I read the various reviews of The Room (1952~1954).
"Are we at the scene where an unfortunate incident has just ended in the early morning? The girl lying on her back on the soft couch, with the sun shining on her body, is presented to the audience as a "sacrifice" In front of the viewer. Is this gesture due to the climax after the rape? Or did nothing happen? "This Body in Balthus's Painting" , it must be a dead body, right? Or is it the moment when the girl faces her tainted fate again and is about to regain consciousness? "Balthus or Reincarnation" by Jean Clair "The weird man who opened the curtains decisively, the corpse-like naked body... Is this scene the end of a tragedy, or has it just begun?" "("The Elegant Life of Balthus", "Dragonfly Book Series" of Xin Chao Society, 2005) "The most bizarre thing is the waitress, who is grabbing the curtain under the gaze of a cat that looks like an ornament. Is she the devil incarnate? In short, the woman lying on her back in the painting seems to have been abandoned in the gap between heaven and earth and turned into a sacrifice. " (Kunio Motoe, "Modern Art 2" "Balthus", Kodansha, 1994) "This is one of the most erotic scenes written by Balthus... A creature that looks like a dwarf opened the curtains, and the sunlight Pours into the room, caressing the woman's vagina. "Balthus" by Gilles Neret, Taschen Publishing House, etc.
What do you think? I am afraid that some female readers will laugh because of the man's blazing delusion. Come out.
Klosovsky also wrote: "This little man lifts the curtains of the high window with exaggerated movements, has a hairstyle like a page boy, and is stiff and expressionless. His face... This is probably an old demon who specializes in all kinds of sins in human childhood, right? Or is it just the artist's own soul, which, depending on the occasion and situation, appears in the painting in the form of a waitress? "Listing the comments one by one in this way, you will find how much influence Klosovsky's comments have on future speeches as Balthus's brother. The comments of the novelist Shibusawa Tatsuhiko are much more moderate. : "The naked girl was still asleep on the sofa, but the other girl didn't care and roughly opened the curtains. "The novelist Albert Camus also believed that when Balthus held a solo exhibition a few years before "Room", he literally affirmed the term "sacrifice" for the girls in his works. The meaning it contains is quite different:
Camus even condemned the tendency to interpret Balthus's paintings from an overly erotic perspective: "The erotic meaning in his paintings has become a topic today.
However, if the world of childhood does contain sexual awareness or desire, it is an inadvertent and subconscious thing. This kind of psychological activity is a potential derivative of repression, and it cannot be considered to be dominant in Balthus's paintings. ”
In fact, when I saw this painting for the first time, I only felt a solemn atmosphere, as if I had just witnessed the moment when some major event was revealed, and there was no "sacrifice" at all. The windows in the painting are "neat" in a geometric sense. At this moment, I can't feel any ominous shadow. It's not because the picture I saw is too small. , I think the biggest factor is that I have never been involved in Balthus's paintings before. However, it must be noted that the picture looks quite bright, with sunlight pouring into the room from the window, if the overall tone is particularly gloomy, or like. The image of the woman's naked body is red like in the cheap print album issued by Taschen Publishing House.
It may be a bit cliché, but I want to name this painting "la revelation." "(revelation). In all Western languages ??where this word is found, it means "exposure" at the same time. The dwarf who opened the curtain is the "soul of the artist" (Klossovsky's words). Because of her purity, the girl Therefore, it is also the most bewitching and precious existence. Although it is the viewer's unfounded personal interpretation that the girl's supine posture has sexual connotations, this posture, which seems to be sleeping but not sleeping, and completely undefended, does not mean that it is suffering. This can be judged from the bowed leg (the unique mark of the girls in Balthus' works), even if it is an unconscious movement, it still requires some strength to support this leg, otherwise it will be inevitable. Will slide down.
If there is any meaning from the arched legs, this beautiful light should be the golden rain of Zeus in Greek mythology. Her daughter Danae had intercourse with Zeus who painted the Golden Rain, and gave birth to the more fertile Perseus. If this painting is named "Danae", it must be the most beautiful portrait in her name so far. It is said that Balthus himself considered naming it "Napoleon Bonaparte who discovered the fertile soil of Italy" while painting. People may say that Napoleon "insulted" Italy, but at least in this painting. Here, we are still in the stage of "discovering" the "fertile soil"
Why is this girl in Balthus's novel neither like Danae nor Venus, and cannot be compared with other nudes. The painting is also regarded as a representation or symbol of "beauty" and "love"? Perhaps it is because the girl's supine posture is too "excessive" and makes us feel a "sadistic desire" that violates a taboo. Come back, is the subject matter of nude paintings considered abnormal? In the West, nude paintings are so common that they are almost annoying. Even public places are full of nude statues, no matter how profound the West has been since ancient Greece. The accumulation of history and the system of meaning are still an anomaly in the world, aren't they? And it's not just Manet's "Scandal" "Luncheon on the Grass" and Balthus's favorite painting that are anomalies. Girls. Almost all nude paintings are unusual, right? The weather in Europe is much colder than in Japan, but nude images are very popular. Are Western women always so naked?
Of course, the body is idealized precisely because reality is not like that. I remember when I was young, I was shocked when I learned that in Titian's "Sacred and Secular Love", the clothed Venus represents secular love, while the naked Venus represents divine love. I jumped at it and called it ridiculous. Later, Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" came to mind, but I agreed with this statement. A few days ago, I was looking at Kotaro Takamura's "Portrait of a Virgin" - a Japanese-looking girl standing naked on the shores of Lake Towada. I couldn't help but think about a question, which is that Japan's acceptance of nude paintings after the Meiji period is very strange. . When the training method of Western painting such as "nude sketch" can be accepted relatively easily, the painter will also learn the heavy tradition of Western painting and make it "his own thing". Can the Japanese female nude really become a painting model that gives birth to "rules of beauty", "ideal" and "divinity"? In Japan, a country where nudity is rarely depicted and engraved. Even in erotic pictures, full nudity is extremely rare. Japan has long held an indifferent attitude toward mixed bathing. Do painters have no regard for its traditions? No, I know painters in the field of oil painting still have troubles. But if you are so troubled, why do you still have to create those nude paintings? So what is the attitude of the public who are the recipients of this culture? It must be said that that is quite a mystery.
To the end, I want to say: My encounter with this painting was because a music blog reported on the performance of performer Klaus Gude at the 2007 Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. Claus Guth's opera "The Marriage of Figaro" is about to be revived, and the performance project has published several works of Balthus for promotion, including "The Room".
Performer Goode's "Figaro" was a repertoire starring a luxurious cast one year ago, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, and received critical acclaim. In the spring of this year (2008), under the banner of Salzburg Music Festival production, Goode performed a performance in Japan with a completely new orchestra, conductor, and singers.
At least, as far as the feeling of watching Goode's version of "Figaro" is concerned, I immediately understood the "ambition" behind the painting "The Room" quoted in the performance project. Goude's performance, rather than the joyful comedy that permeates the people's spirit of rebellion, emphasizes the erotic side hidden as a "flavor" in Mozart's witty opera, casting it with a chasing light and vividly highlighting it. Make it an explicit erotic psychodrama. Even the curtain raiser appears as a character. The whole performance is well thought out and every detail is planned, which is admirable. However, I have to stay away from Goode's complacent "expanded interpretation" or "over-interpretation". No, to put it more bluntly, he was furious.
Balthus, who loves Mozart deeply and also designed the stage installation for the opera "Così", would wonder what he would think if he saw Goode's performance. This weirdo, who is very understandable to common sense, might take pleasure in this.
(The quotations without indicating the publisher are all quoted from "Balthus" compiled by Abe Yoshio and Xie Fumiko, White Water Society, 2001)
June 2008