Photographer Hisaji Hara's Homage to Balthus

LENSCRATCH posted an interesting series of works by Tokyo photographer Hisaji Hara (done in 2009 and exhibited in Tokyo last year at Gallery Bauhaus). These works are based on the compositions of Balthus' paintings (shown above: "Katia Reading", an image that I have on the wall of my studio). Hisaji Hara's photographs show classic Japanese school girls and others posing for the camera in the exact same poses of the figures in Balthus' paintings. This series of photos has a B&W vintage look and are meant as an homage to a great painter.

Balthus was a painter who carefully chose unique poses to show the unselfconsciousness of youth or to emphasize dramatic angles in a composition. (Balthus, who died in 2001, had a Japanese wife, Setsuko Ideta, and many of his own paintings were influenced by Japanese art. I miss Balthus.) 

Follow this LINK for many more examples of Hisaji Hara's homage to Balthus. 

The Art of Amy Crehore

Two Balthus Shows in NYC

BALTHUS

Untitled, c. 1999–2000

Color Polaroid

4 x 4 inches (10.2 x 10.2 cm)

© Harumi Klossowska de Rola

 

Beautiful polaroids (late studies) by Balthus at Gagosian Gallery

and a new Balthus show at the Met for those lucky enough to be in NYC.

Judith Thurman writes for The New Yorker blog about meeting Balthus in Rome 40 years ago and also posing for his wife (who was also a painter). Interesting! LINK

I love the paintings and drawings of Balthus, as you know if you read this blog.

P.S. Picasso owned a Balthus painting

 

The Art of Amy Crehore

A Lanky Pair

Balthus

Detail of hair and face

Nu au miroir 1981-83 Copyright Balthus (from the book,"Balthus")
Le drap bleu 1981-82 Copyright Balthus (from the book, "Balthus")

I could not resist posting about Balthus again. These two portraits of lanky teens have such rich layers of paint. The green undertone makes their skin seem realer than real. I can remember standing like that with my knees in, belly out. And look at the way the golden hair is painted! It's all crazy-looking yet somehow it's just right. There is plenty of scumbled texture and a keen sense of design. In "Le Drap Bleu", the table legs are echoing the girl's out-stretched leg. Everything is reduced down to it's most basic, simple form.

Balthus

art
Amy_Crehore

Balthus, King of Cats

"Nude with Cat" 1949, copyright Balthus

A year or two ago, the Portland Art Museum sponsored a show of paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. I was fortunate enough to get to see this painting by Balthus that I would never have seen otherwise. It certainly is one of my very favorites: the composition of angles, the spontaneity, the look on the girl's face, the unselfconscious pose, the delighted cat, the lighting and the solidity of the forms. It has it all.

Read the museum's description of Balthus and his art:

Balthus, National Gallery of Victoria

I did a tribute to Balthus maybe 5 or 6 years ago in a painting called

"Homage to the King of Cats" .

He's been an artistic inspiration for a long time now. A true original.

art

Amy_Crehore

Wuthering Heights and Balthus

Illustrating the book, "Wuthering Heights" (1932-1935), shaped the painting career of Balthus. Many of his paintings were derived from these drawings. As you can see, it's all about angles and geometry with Balthus. That is why I find him so fascinating. For more glimpses of the book : Art Textbooks

and a quote from Balthus via Philosophical Conversations:

‘I am a very emotional man, perhaps too much so… My youth was an absolute whirlwind of Feelings, exactly like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which I illustrated. I was completely at home in this novel. It described my youth perfectly. I was in love with Antionette – de Watteville – and I was determined to win her. But Antionette, on top of being a difficult girl, was already engaged to someone else. I reread her letters every evening. I think that, like Heathcliffe, I didn’t want to leave adolescence.’

And, from artic.edu Caty Telfair :

"The drawings that Balthus produced for Wuthering Heights proved to be seminal for him as an artist; no fewer than ten of his later best-known canvases draw compositional elements directly from these illustrations."

The Art of Amy Crehore

Mysterious Balthus Painting

Mysterious painter, mysterious painting! The above painting by Balthus called "Sleeping Nude" or "Nu Assoupi" 1980, 79" x 59", as seen in the book written by his son, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola (Abrams 1996), happens to be in a collection in a skyscraper lobby in NYC but no one is allowed to get close to it. Read Marshall Sponder's story about this painting on artNYC .

Anyone who has read about Balthus has come across this telegram which Balthus wrote to the art critic John Russell right before his Tate Gallery retrospective in London in 1968.
"No biographical details. Bathus is a painter of whom nothing is known. Now let us look at the pictures. Regards. B"

Bathus was reclusive and silent for years. In the years before his death, however, Balthus opened up to the press and we know a lot more about him. Biographys were written and art books were published.

It is some consolation that we get to see this painting reproduced in a book even if we cannot get close to it in real life. What a tease! It's one of my very favorites.

Happy Birthday Balthus

Nude with a Cat 1949 by Balthus


Balthus was actually born on a leap year which doesn't surprise me as he was a very unusual man who remained young-at-heart his entire life. Born February 29, 1908, in Paris, France, he's one of my favorite artists. He died in 2001 on Feb 19 at age 92. Here's the NYTimes Obit story . Happy Birthday Balthus.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Link to Photos of Balthus (Life Magazine)

Nude with a Cat 1949 by Balthus

Life Magazine has some great photos of Balthus, his model Frederique Tison and his studio at the Chateau de Chassy. Here's the LINK to the LIFE pictures where you will find many more. (Thanks, Nickhaus)

Mirror, Mirror...

Nude Before a Mirror 1955 Balthus at the MET

This was always one of my favorite paintings by Balthus.

Felix Vallotton 1906

Vanity by Hans Memling (1490)

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Thanks, Internet Weekly for pointing out wikimedia commons

Mirrors in Art (where I found the images, except for the Balthus)

The Art of Amy Crehore

Leap Year- Birthday Of Balthus

I always envied people born on Feb. 29th. Balthus, the painter, was one of those special people. He was born on Feb. 29, 1908. I am celebrating Balthus and everyone else who has a birthday today. Here he is as the "King of Cats".

The Art of Amy Crehore

It Doesn't Have to Be Explained

Painting by Balthus

Great painting doesn't have to be explained. It doesn't need a political tagline to make you understand the meaning of it. You won't squint at it and scratch your head, you'll just soak it in, because you can't take your eyes off it. It will make you feel something. And no one has to tell you what to feel. It's a personal experience. And you will come back and look again. It will resonate. Balthus doesn't need to explain his hard work. You don't have to ask why?... or what is it? He didn't just slap it together and try to fool somebody into thinking it was something more than it is. He spent months and years on his paintings. Slowly layering and building them up. Each one is provocative and powerful. Each stands on it's own. Each has an organized design of angles, color and form. It's not just about the idea or a superficial style. It's like a great book. Or a great film. He didn't talk about it. He just did it. And gave it to the world. No matter how long it took to paint it and get it right. This painting called "Therese Revant" (1938) is a masterpiece. And I'm sure he struggled with it until he was satisfied.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Hugo Boettinger 1880-1934, Painter

Hugo Boettinger in his studio with the large painting "Zwei Blumenmädchen" (1911)-see the guitar in the background?

"Jugend", oil painting by Hugo Boettinger, 1918

"Three Girls Bathing on Bach" 1910 painting by Hugo Boettinger

Who was Hugo Boettinger (or Bottinger)? He was Czech painter who was born in 1880 and died in 1934. He was also a graphic artist and studied at the Prague Academy. He was a friend of T. F. Simon, another amazing painter.
You can find a whole page devoted to Boettinger on
tfsimon.com .
Follow the link and scroll down the page to see lots of photos, paintings and graphic works. He apparently loved music as there are photos of him holding an accordian, a violin, and a guitar. The painting above is entitled "Three Girls Bathing on Bach". The other painting, "Jugend", pre-dates Balthus, yet it has much in common with him. One wonders if Balthus saw these works and was influenced by Boettinger.
Here is another site with images: Michis-Seiten .
Boettinger's paintings of nudes bathing are fascinating compositions. You can see how he loved to overlap the poses of his figures- legs, arms, angles -to suggest interesting relationships. I like to do that, too. I am glad I stumbled upon this great artist!
The Art of Amy Crehore

Nudes in Nature

Painting by Emile Chambon

 Painting by Henri Rousseau

 

A couple of paintings I recently discovered - one by Emile Chambon of two nude women in the woods. One girl is standing up and displaying a just little bit of herself. The other girl is revealing absolutely nothing of herself with a cloth draped perfectly over her private parts, but she is looking intently at the other one. This painting has a wonderful sense of humor as does some of the other work by this artist. Chambon seems to rely heavily on compositional elements taken directly from Balthus in many of his paintings, but this is a nice example of his unique work.

The other painting is by Henri Rousseau. It is a charming scene of a big black dog getting it on with a lovely nude who happens to have a mirror in her hand.

(Just noticed the mirror!) This is a painting that I had never seen before.

Henri, you are a bad boy!

This is yet another example of humor in art history.

The great masters of art knew how to have fun.

Thank god for these artists. They keep me on track.

Now, back to painting....

I am finishing up my two new ones. Stay tuned!

 

The Art of Amy Crehore

 

(Thanks, Ralph Paine for sharing Henri Rousseau image) 



Women Dreaming, Dreaming...

Julius Troschel: Ruhende. 1860
Sleeping Nymph, c. 1535
Alexandre Schoenewerk: La jeune Tarantine, 1871

Wikimedia Commons has a fascinating page of sleeping women in art. I can think of a few more images to add - paintings by Balthus, for instance. I have even painted some sleeping women myself. It's one of my favorite things to paint! I chose a few sculptures to post here.

Sleeping Women in Art

Thanks again to Internet Weekly for the heads up!

The Art of Amy Crehore

Loren Munk Paintings at Lesley Heller Workspace NYC until Oct.16th, 2011

"Village of the Damned" 2004-2005 60"x72" oil on linen by Loren Munk

Photo of Loren Munks's paintings in progress in his studio from Anaba blog

Some paintings take time to complete. Sometimes they take 3 years. Ask Balthus. Such is the case for Loren Munk's colorful and complicated paintings that document and map the history of the New York art scene. Roberta Smith's great review in the NY Times described one large piece as "a telephone switchboard run amok". I like these paintings and I like Loren. Loren Munk is also known as James Kalm (the guy on the bike) who makes little films of art shows in NYC. He may not remember me, but he was kind enough to interview and film me outside of my Brooklyn show at Ad Hoc Gallery in the summer of 2008. Here's a link to that video.

You can see Loren Munk's paintings through 

Oct. 16th at Lesley Heller Workspace, 54 Orchard St., NYC. 

Loren Munk's Website

The Art of Amy Crehore

Italian Nudes - Felice Casorati

Merrigio 1923 Felice Casorati
Le Signorine 1912 Felice Casorati
Felice Casorati by Herbert List 1949
Nude Study by Felice Casorati

I always admired the studio nudes painted by Italian Painter Felice Casorati (1886-1963), a contemporary of Antonio Donghi. He went from being part of the Symbolist movement in 1912 to being associated with the Italian Metaphysical painters ten years later. "Le Signorine" could mean "The Young Ladies" or it could mean "The Spinsters". Either way, the picture is humorous and psychological. Dolores F., Violante, Bianca (the "white" nude) and Gioconda are their names.

And, in the painting above it, "Merrigio", we want to know what the one nude is thinking while the other one sleeps. The hat and shoes are a nice contrast. And who is that naked guy in the background? Reminds me of Balthus with his mysterious background figures, but it is also a still life. It's all about form, texture and composition.

Felice Casorati