Balthus is almost as famous for his reclusiveness and reluctance to divulge personal information as for his provocative paintings of young women, a fact his eldest son addresses with some pique in his introduction to this superb volume, the most extensive collection of his father's lustrous and enigmatic work yet published. Klossowski de Rola defends Balthus' insistence on privacy, then offers a few tantalizing biographical facts and a set of striking photographs of the artist. Readers are free, then, to study and interpret Balthus' intriguing, unsettling, brilliantly stylized, richly textured, and strongly composed street scenes, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. His most famous paintings date from the 1930s and 1940s and feature, in his son's words, "languid adolescent" girls, images Klossowski de Rola insists are "untouchable archetypes of purity," but which are clearly erotic works of the highest order. Balthus, nearly 90 and still working, is a profoundly sensual painter, both in his handling of paint and in his subject matter. What's "pure" and magnificent here is the artist's sense of eroticism and immense talent.
Donna Seaman
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