Vanished Splendors: A Memoir [Anglais] [Relié]

Before he died late last year at 92, Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, commonly known by his painterly name of Balthus, dictated a disparate collection of brief reminiscences and aphorisms to French journalist Vircondelet, who shaped them into this unusual but evocative memoir. Following a 15-page introduction by Joyce Carol Oates, the text is organized into 107 anecdotes and encounters, ranging in length from a few sentences to three pages of double-spaced type, with two sections of illustrations (not seen by PW). Vircondelet weaves together the disparate elements of the artist's memories, descriptions of process, art historical discourses and statements of religious devotion into a loosely interconnected whole that probes just a few themes with ever-greater depth and feeling. The painter introduces the subject of eroticized adolescent girls early on and returns to it repeatedly, rejecting the obvious sexual interpretation of his subject and insisting on his attention to a model's "slow transformation from an angelic state to that of a young girl." In the context of this volume, which details devout Catholicism and a consuming interest in depicting spirit beneath surfaces, this explanation is plausible if not altogether convincing. Elsewhere, Balthus describes his love of early Renaissance painting, and his interest in absorbing the work of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca; he insists, with respect to his own work, "I give no tyrannical orders, but let the painting make itself. The hand receives indications and serves as a humble and faithful tool in attaining self-asserting beauty." He details the rituals of his daily life in Switzerland (managed by his wife, Countess Setsuko) as he continues to paint into old age. This great painter's candid immediacy in bringing to life encounters with the beautiful, famous, talented and with his own genius will have art junkies thoroughly hooked.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Anyone looking for a clear, chronological account of the life of French painter Balthus (1908-2001) should not turn to these memoirs, which were dictated to Vircondelet (Duras) during Balthus's last years. Here, Balthus describes the various episodes of his long life in brief, often hazy vignettes. As he is one of the more secretive artists of the confessional 20th century, he reveals little that is new. Ever defensive about the interpretation of his work (especially his representations of young girls), Balthus tells us again and again just to look at the works themselves. In recounting his early life with his mother, he credits her lover, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, for his early formation as an artist, and he rarely resorts to mere gossip while reminiscing about life in Paris during the 1920s among such figures as Picasso, Giacometti, and Camus. Though he speaks little of his first marriage and children, Balthus describes in loving detail his later life with wife Setsuko and daughter Haromi. Nicholas Weber's Balthus is recommended for those in search of a less impressionistic rendition of the painter. An intriguing source document for larger collections of contemporary art.
Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Balthus' provocatively enigmatic and technically brilliant paintings of young girls, cats, mirrors, and theatrical settings intrigue and baffle viewers. Reclusive and silent on the subject of his loaded imagery, Balthus (1908-2001), a Polish count ensconced in a Swiss Alps chalet with his beloved Japanese countess and their daughter, was the Salinger of the art world, allowing only outsiders into his rarefied realm late in life when his eyesight was failing. It was then that he decided to dictate his memoir, a transporting series of poetic illuminations of his belief in painting as a spiritual pursuit. Resoundingly introduced by Joyce Carol Oates, Balthus' musings flow back and forth in time as he pays tribute to his "masters"--Piero della Francesca, Delacroix, and poet Rainer Maria Rilke (his mother's lover)--and attests to his devotion to light, beauty, solitude, and Catholicism. The young girls he painted are not erotic, the high-minded painter insists, but angelic. Certainly Balthus is, as Oates writes, "one of the great originals" of twentieth-century art, and undoubtedly one of his most enthralling works of art is himself. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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."

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski, 1908–2001) was one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. Benjamin Ivry is a poet and biographer (Ravel, Poulenc, Rimbaud) who has also translated works by Jules Verne and André Gide, as well as a biography of Camus.