Jerry Saltz at New York Magazine:
Henry Darger’s little girls, Gustave Courbet’s genital close-up, even Picasso’s explicit depiction of fellatio: You might think we had passed the point where a major painting by a first-tier artist is still taboo. Nonetheless, The Guitar Lesson, from 1934, by (the bogusly named) Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus, is just such a forbidden work. At its 1934 debut in Paris, it was shown for fifteen days, covered, in the gallery’s back room. In 1977, it appeared for a month at Pierre Matisse’s 57th Street gallery. It has never been exhibited again, as if it were some metaphysical equivalent of the cursed videotape in The Ring that kills anyone who views it.
In his review of that 1977 show in New York Magazine, Thomas Hess lamented that it “can’t be illustrated in the pages of New York.” (Well, times change.) Alas, you also won’t see it in the scintillating “Balthus: Cats and Girls,” opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week. The exhibition’s organizer, Sabine Rewald, is by far the greatest Balthus scholar ever, and her show’s theme and focus may justify its exclusion. So it remains frustratingly, heartbreakingly hidden from view.
1 条评论:
以下是我在 Vulture 上看到的留言： “I had never seen this painting before, and I know very little about The Art World -- but I wonder if a lot of these negative comments are missing the point? This scene simply seems to be a metaphor for art (specifically, in this case, music). Art can disturb us-- make us feel violated -- but it's also capable of offering rapture-like ecstasy. Much like sex. To become a successful artist one needs to work hard on their craft (the skinned knees), one needs to open themselves up for the public's gaze, no matter how vulnerable it feels (the hiked-up skirt), and in the end art is nothing without genuine emotion (which is why this guitar lesson has the guitar on the ground -- learning chords and scales is secondary to feeling the power of music/art).
The scene of abuse never "happened." If you had walked in on the scene it would have looked like, from an outsider's perspective, a normal music lesson. Balthus is illustrating the power of art -- that it can drag us through the gutters of depravity, as well as lift us to the heights of the sublime -- and that these paths are not mutually exclusive."哈！
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