- Hardcover: 656 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Oct 12 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679407375
- ISBN-13: 978-0679407379
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.5 x 5.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Balthus is as multifaceted and spellbinding as its subject, the 20th-century painter whose canvasses have been likened both to those of the ethereal Piero della Francesca and sadomasochistic erotica. Biographer Nicholas Fox Weber quotes Oscar Wilde when discussing Balthus's most notorious painting, in which a music teacher violently molests her young pupil: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.... And so Balthus claimed to me time and again. If viewers find The Guitar Lesson ... shocking or titillating, repulsive or seductive, they reveal only their own psyches, not his." Balthus repeatedly insisted on noninterpretive, pre-Freudian, stylistic observation of his paintings--mere studies in light and shadow, form and shape, composition and color--or so he would have Weber (and the reader) believe.
Weber describes his own psychological near-seduction by Balthus's proffered confidences, and his brief, initial inclination to allow the artist to dominate their interviews. Despite Balthus's gift for prevarication--romance on short notice is his specialty--Weber is astute enough to sift through every possible document. He elucidates Balthus's mother's long affair with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; her Jewish ancestry, which Balthus denied; the atmosphere of religious mockery among the surrealists; Balthus's marriages and affairs and his obsession with pubescent girls. As the book progresses, Weber delves deeply into an analysis of the artist's psyche. In the end, he achieves remarkable, sensitive insights into the nature of Balthus's character and subjects. He patiently builds a case for the theory that even the artist's female adolescent models reflect his secret selves and fantasies, developed in reaction to many kinds of childhood pain and confusion.
Weber secures every important painting within a framework of historical reference, personal psychology, and stylistic influence. With this he demonstrates his uniqueness among biographers of artists--he actually understands painting, including its technical aspects. A hugely pleasurable read, this book compares to Hilary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse in its erudition and richness of detail. --Peggy Moorman
From Publishers Weekly
A highly regarded art historian (Patron Saints), Weber ingeniously structures his biography of 91-year-old Balthazar Klossowska, or Balthus, by draping his voluminous investigations over facts that emerged during his visit with the famously reclusive painter and his Japanese wife at their elegant Swiss chalet in 1991. A French citizen of Polish ancestry who has claimed descent from Polish nobility, the Romanovs and Lord Byron, Balthus survived a childhood of economic hardship and displacement with the help of his mother's lover, poet Ranier Maria Rilke. In his work, Balthus uses Old Master coloring to depict scenes in canvases whose atmospheric haze and violated figures (many of them highly eroticized adolescents) belie the compositions' sturdy grids. Weber explores Balthus's many influences, from the work of Piero della Francesca to psychoanalytic theory and his brother's fascination with the Marquis de Sade. Again and again, Weber insists that the artist articulate the intentions behind each and every element in his work. Of course, no painter could, and Balthus, whether from age, puckishness or the sincere conviction that his art must speak for itself, toys with Weber throughout their conversations. The friction between the two forces Weber to do his ownAat times heroicAresearch. Whether visiting a sex crimes unit in Manhattan, the New York apartment of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos or an acquaintance from Balthus's days as director of the French Academy in Rome, Weber assiduously records the evidence for his psychosexual view of Balthus's paintings. In the process, Weber does justice to both the artist and his art. If he occasionally adopts a gossipy tone, that's a minor flaw in a book that will remain a splendid account of a complex life and as fine an artist's biography as this season is likely to produce. 16 color plates not seen by PW; 116 b&w illus. First serial to the New Yorker. U.K rights, Weidenfeld &Nicholson. Reader Subscriptions Book Club selection. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Weber Case,
This review is from: Balthus: A Biography (Hardcover)
This book has disappointed me greatly.To all the negative reviews displayed here I can only add more... Its apparently well researched subject is just a cover-up for making yet another buck, using an artist who is lesser known, often misunderstood and provocative. Any biography of Balthus would have been appreciated at the time of the artist's old age and the obviously quick aproach of death, and people like Mr. Weber, unfortunately, quite often are the first to write in such moments. This is not a book about Balthus or his life or his art, it is about quickly making a name for himself and some money off Balthus, in the name of his art, when it was still possible. Inaccessability of Balthus the person has allowed only a small circle of friends, family members, and patrons to benefit financially, and socially from Balthus's name and Art, however Mr.Weber, a parvenue as he is, craved for some of it too. The result - is this book, a book about infiltrating oneself ( or trying to) into a privileged society of artists, aristocrats, wealthy collectors, celebs etc. and then - just " telling all" about who they really are: pretenders, liers, perverts and above all - anti-Semites... I only regret three thing about this book: That I have spent money to buy it ( so contributing to the cause of Mr.Weber); that I have read this book ; that we have all here read this book. PS: To my knowledge, there is not a single Novgorod near Pinsk, or anywhere in Belarus, and Mr.Weber was probably alluding to Novogrudok ( Nowogrodek, Navahrudak) about 125km from Minsk. (Weber might have thought that throwing in some obscure town names from Eastern Europe and ambelishing that book with them would make his "research" look more professional)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Capturing Balthus,
By Kent D. Jarratt (New York City, New York USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Balthus: A Biography (Hardcover)
This is a superb biography in which the author willingly submits to a cat and mouse game with the husband and wife team of Balthus and Setusko, both of whom seem supremely confident that they can seduce and manipulate the biographer into telling only the tale they feel the world deserves. Like a good psychoanalyst, Weber allows himself to be taken in and then slowly works his way back out, transformed, but intact. There are so many layers to this story that it makes sense for Weber to include his own narrative as a way to contain and to bind. Balthus comes across as a wonderful paradox as Weber experiences him as both tender and sadistic, real and unreal. Perhaps Weber's own propensity for sharing unflattering details of many of the people he meets along the way (a woman fondling her breast during an interview; the outrageously tasteless home of a California collector, are examples) is a natural response to the sadism that Balthus, himself, disowns time and time again. Weber engages in many acts of bravado during the writing of this book and toward the end describes an amazing meeting between Balthus and the author's own two young daughters -- they seem to have been raised with a hearty, self-assurance. At no time does one feel that the author's intrusions are gratuitous. He does a wonderful job of illuminating aspects of Balthus' life, thought,and art, and his psychoanalytic riffs on the paintings ring true and are expressed in a down-to-earth manner. Of course, how could one ever get to the heart of the matter when it comes to Balthus? But in the end, Balthus, the trickster, gets respectfully what he deserves. Certainly it might make him wince, but then for the artist who early on loved to shock, turnabout is fair play. Bravo to Nicholas Fox Weber who allows himself to feel toward his subject a complex set of emotions that when examined helps to capture some truths about this complicated artist.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Decadence! Oh my!,
By
This review is from: Balthus: A Biography (Hardcover)
The story told in this book is not an original one. In fact, it is, in outline, the same story that provided Henry James with his best plots: a prim New Englander, in Europe for a noble cause, is attracted to, but finally repelled by, those decadent Europeans. Nicholas Fox Weber writes his own story, but he shows us how accurately James observed the appeal and the repulsion that a certain kind of European had -- and still has -- for a certain kind of American. If Lambert Strether, from "The Ambassadors", or the heroine of "The Portrait of a Lady", had written about their own experiences among the rich and sophisticated old-money types from the continent, their stories would have had many similarities to Weber's. At first he is charmed and approving of the old-world manners with which he is received. Balthus is charming. He answers the phone himself! Just slightly distracted, as older people can be, Balthus regales Weber with anecdotes of the famous and infamous celebrities that he has known, and Weber feels blessed. The great artist has deigned to confide in him. He is in the presence not only of great talent, but of great taste as well, and if such a hero includes him at the dinner table, it must be a kind of validation. It is later that he feels seduced and misled. Balthus has lied! Balthus has invented stories about himself, to seem more romantic and more mysterious! The sophistication of the great houses holds dark secrets... there is a hint of non-noble blood... there is a hint of anti-semitism.... there is a hint that even the lady of the house can commit a faux pas with the queen of Spain! There were parties in Rome which lasted all night, at which seductions may have occurred! Weber is shocked. It may be the world of the great artists, but it is definitely not the world of which a good American would approve. There is one major difference, though, between this book and the one Lambert Strether would have written. If James' hero had been invited into the home of one of the world's wealthiest men, to see a masterpiece which few people have had a chance to see in the last 50 years, he would have shown gratitude to the man who allowed him into his bedroom. Lambert Strether, if he had seen a box of hemorrhoid medicine on the night table, would have turned his eyes away with discretion, and made no mention of it to anyone. Yet this is the detail that Weber uses as the climax of the scene, and it is not the only lurid one that seems to hold a fascination for him. When you finish reading this book, what stays in your mind is not a new understanding of Balthus' background, and still less a new look at Balthus' art. What you remember is the roll of flab around Claus von Bulow's middle, or the lovely interviewee who fondles herself. This is not a book about Balthus. It is about Weber and his disapproval. He should have named it "Lifestyles of the Rich and Slimy". It sure was fun to read.
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