The painter Balthus, whose tenacity and cultivated taste for secrecy have enveloped him in an aura of forbidding mystery, wrote this memoir at the end of his long life. A man who for decades opted to "give expression to the world" rather than to "express" himself speaks for the first and only time about his life, family, work, his theory of art and how it intersects with history, literature, and spirituality.
Balthus was born Balthasar Klossowski in 1908 to Polish art historian Erich Klossowski and his wife, the painter Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro. The family lived in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In this memoir Balthus describes his childhood with his mother and her lover -- the poet Rainer Maria Rilke -- who became Balthus's own spiritual mentor. He evokes la vie de boheme in Paris during the 1920s, his friendships with Picasso, Derain, Artaud, Giacometti, Saint-Exupéry, René Char, Pierre Jean Jouve, and Albert Camus. He discusses his paintings, offers glimpses into his marriage, and expresses his passion for Chinese art and the Swiss chalets and Italian villas that he helped to restore. He recalls touching moments with his beloved daughter Harumi and the inspiration he drew from his cats. Also, in a kind of final lesson, Balthus shares his thoughts about painting and creation, denounces contemporary art as being illusory and deceitful, and talks candidly about his Catholic faith and how it inspired his work.
"We are most charmed by the memoir's ease of expression, as if Balthus were confiding in us, as individuals," writes Joyce Carol Oates in her introduction to Vanished Splendors. "We are brought into a startling intimacy with genius."

Vanished Splendors: A Memoir

Arts & Photography

Balthus

History & Criticism

Ecco

This book is a thorough overview of the work of Balthus (b. 1908), the elusive painter whose fascinating images of young women were first greatly admired by the Surrealists, and have remained so today. This controversial artist is exceedingly reclusive, and until the last decade rarely gave interviews or allowed himself to be photographed. As a result, both his life and his work have been the subject of much intrigue and speculation. Now, his eldest son, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, offers privileged insights into the art and thought of this remarkable man. Here is the widest selection of Balthus's work ever published: landscapes, street scenes, still lifes, and women, from the 1930s to the present, including all his most important paintings of the last ten years. A unique collection of rare photographs presents the young Balthus in his studio, as well as in recent images taken by his friend Henri Cartier-Bresson and other photographers. The art of Balthus - private, hermetic, evocative, mysterious - lends itself to both deep readings and simple appreciation. The artist himself has always resisted the former, remaining convinced that the paintings should speak for themselves. But, bowing to the demands of a career that has encompassed major retrospective exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, London, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, he has assisted his son in the creation of this book.

DE ROLA, Stanislas Klossowski

Individual Artists

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

Throughout the twentieth century, the evolution of mainstream Modernism in the arts has been shadowed and made complex by alternative expressions of a seemingly retrograde type, art that appears to set back the clock or to redirect the stream of progress. Modern Art Despite Modernism explores the anti-Modernist impulse in painting and sculpture through socio-cultural conflicts of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Texts by Robert Storr advocate the strengths of this impulse in paintings and drawings by Otto Dix, Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente and even Pablo Picasso--and note the enduring popularity of such artists as Pavel Tchelitchew, whose "Hide and Seek," along with Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," remain among the public's favorite pictures. Storr also discusses taste and its implications, both part and present, for institutions like The Museum of Modern Art. This book was published as the second in a series of three titles, in conjunction with the millennial exhibitions schedule of MoMA2000 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Modern Art Despite Modernism

Matisse, Henri

BACON, FRANCIS

O'Keeffe, Georgia

Dalí, Salvador

Shahn, Ben

Lowry, Glenn

RICHTER, Gerhard

Clemente, Francesco

GROSZ, George

Lowry, Glenn D.

Beckmann, Max

De Chirico, Giorgio

FREUD, Lucian

STORR, Robert

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mitsou: Forty images

H.N. Abrams

Mitsou: Histoire d'Un Chat (Romans, Essais, Poesie, Documents) (French Edition)

RILKE, RAINER MARIA

Drawing

Les Belles Lettres

Balthus: Un atelier dans le Morvan, 1953-1961 : Dijon, Musée des beaux-arts, 12 juin-27 septembre 1999 (RMN ARTS DU 20E EXPOSITIONS) (French Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Reunion des musees nationaux

Balthus (French Edition)

HERSCHER

Mitsou, historia de un gato ; Cartas a un joven pintor

Artemisa Ediciones, S.L.

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