Balthus: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: why?
Review: Balthus is an intriguing painter who deserves better than this. The book is much too long, repetitive, and ultimately tiresome. It would seem as though the author doesn't know how to look at paintings. He's alternately fawning in the face of celebrity, and nasty. Don't bother with this one. Look at the paintings instead.

Rating:
Summary: Balthus: A Biography
Review: Balthus, The Count of Rola, The King of Cats, part ethnically Jewish Roman Catholic, self-invented, self-taught, king of the figurative painters of the last century, deserved a better biographer than this.

Nicholas Fox Weber has very strong opinions about his subject. Unfortunately, his opinions take on the form of judgment and one can only have wished that he would have had the intelligence to bow out and leave the task to someone who could temper their passion with objectivity.

Balthus wants to remain an enigma. This is well known. To assume he would be the one to gain the artist's full trust and candor was hubris on Weber's part. Of course, Balthus' reinvented past posed problems to the author but as he points out in his Afterword, he was forewarned. Instead of being persistent, even confrontational, Weber wimps out. He gives up. He proclaims Balthus a hopeless, self-deluded, pathological liar. And so, he relies almost exclusively on second- and third-hand accounts including those from excommunicated friends whose motives are questionable. Even worse, he stands in for the artist, assuming he knows what the artists would have to say about his observations and gathered conflicting facts.

Weber's frustration is visible on every page-he takes it out on his subject. Like an adolescent discovering the fallibility of an adored parent, Weber magnifies the flaws and uses every opportunity to illustrate them. One senses the author, feeling challenged, is on a mission to strip the artist bare and then mockingly point out his shortcomings. It is not a question as to whether all accusations may be true; Weber makes some convincing arguments (as well as some amazing assumptions). But the tone is adversarial and without compassion, sense of proportion, and sometimes simple decency. (When Weber discovers that Balthus' two-year-old son died from Tay Sachs disease, he holds the fact up as proof of Balthus' denied Jewish heritage and some kind of divine justice. It's absolutely horrifying.)

Weber lets us know that he is not above the vain snobbery he attributes to his subject, when in the last chapter he waxes rhapsodic when Balthus dotes over his two young daughters. But then, in the Afterword, he accuses the same man of being pedophiliac when he dotes over another adolescent, his latest model Anna Valli, in a photo shoot. Like some beauty pageant stage-father he comments on Anna as being dressed "too sexy" a "knowing Lolita... delighting in her stardom." Catty and jealous beyond belief.

Fortunately, the simple facts of the artist's life are fascinating enough, the anecdotes from his friends and enemies, colorful and sometimes insightful. I do care what these players think about this man. I don't care what Mr. Weber thinks about him one whit.

Rating:
Summary: For Balthus Fans, Obviously
Review: It's certainly the definitive biography of Balthus, although -- as others have noted -- the author becomes too annoyed at the stories Balthus weaves in and out of their conversations. I believe the author is at first seduced by Balthus, and then feels betrayed as he discoves the "truth". Balthus is still right though. It matters not what he says; the only thing that matters is his art. If you are anxious to learn about the person this is an excellent book to read. Balthus and Lucien Freud are the two greatest living 20th century painters. That alone makes any scholarly work (and this is one) interesting. Even with the author somewhat in the way.

Rating:
Summary: Decadence! Oh my!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Weber Case
Review: 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)

Rating:
Summary: A Stronger Editorial Pen Needed
Review: This book would have benefitted greatly from a stronger editorial pen; half the book would have had twice the value.

As others have already noted, there is much good study in this book on Balthus. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of autobiography on the part of Mr. Weber, who has painted himself into the Balthus picture as an antagonist with this work. Mr. Weber is relentless in insisting on the importance of Freudian interpretation, as seen, for example, in this paragraph: "He [Balthus] suggested repeatedly that psychoanalysis was unworthy -- and intellectually dangerous. But in fact, in his earlier years -- when most people he knew treated Freudian thought with respect and admiration -- Balthus, like Rilke, may well have been one of those people who believed in 'the primary efficacy of self-treatment' through his work. He, too, may have been afraid that greater self-knowledge and mental hygiene would have prevented him from working through his fantasies and neuroses in the manner he chose -- which was to paint them. Not that Balthus would ever have voiced such sentiments at the stage of his existence in which I found him, but one can easily imagine him having had such views earlier on." This passage seems equally likely to bear out Balthus's concerns regarding psychoanalysis (Mr Weber admits being a patient of psychoanalysis). Mr. Weber is also relentless in tracing in some depth the Jewish ancestry of the painter's mother; you cannot help but feel that it has great personal importance to the biographer himself.

Mr. Weber does not seem to fully understand the 'eternal realities' that lie below the surface structure of a Poussin painting. He has in the same way misunderstood the meaning of Coomaraswamy to Balthus. Here some reading of Platonic thought on seeing the 'real' through the veil of the world, perhaps even through the eyes of Augustine, would have helped. Mr. Weber repeatedly remains stuck in 'the veil.'

Finally, the gratuitous and unkind personal observations which do not serve to elucidate any aspect of Balthus's work or character, but only hurt the artist's family, bring to ruin what had potentially been a fine biography. If only Mr. Weber possessed a fraction of the editorial skill of Balthus!

Rating:
Summary: Capturing Balthus
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Wish there is less of the author
Review: Well written biography is hard to find. Often than not, you see more of the author's psychology and his hangups than the subject itself. This book has great photos of the Balthus paintings and has excellent in-depth discussions regarding the paintings. However, the author's irritation/contempt/sometimes anger towards Balthus (regarding his dishonesty about his Jewish heritage, the meaning of his art, his past, etc) shows throughout the book. I have no doubt that the artist's lies regarding these matters have importance in understanding his art. However, Mr. Weber should have a little more detachment to the subject, for I cannot help feeling that his near obsessiveness on the matters somehow prevented him from gaining deeper perspective into Balthus' psyche. This is truly dissapointing because this mars the otherwise wonderfully researched and much needed biography of the artist. I only wish that the author used more control and restrain in writing. Highly recommend for anyone interested in Balthus art.