Julius Caesar Balhus Research Paper

Balthus (born Balthasar Klossowski) was born in Paris, France to an artistic family; his father was a prominent art historian and his mother was a painter. Balthus was exposed at an early age to the arts and to the social scene in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, with his mentor (and his mother’s lover) being the celebrated poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
As a young boy Balthus’s drawings were published in his book Mitsou (1921), which included an introduction by Rilke, and started him off at an early age on a lifelong artistic career.

Emerging career
Clearly Balthus’s early exposure to creative energies both through his parents and through their social circles propelled him to an artistic career from a young age. He created art throughout his early years, while visiting foreign places
on his travels and when he served the army in Morocco in the early 1930s.
After his service, Balthus began dedicating his time to developing his painting oeuvre in his Paris studio. As the hub of modernism at its height, Paris was home to some of the artistic expressions that have shaped contemporary art today, including the move towards abstraction with cubism. Balthus, however, retained his earlier classical influences and instead continued to work in a representational format.
His first Paris exhibition was held in 1934, and he emerged into the art world with a scandalous start. Perhaps his best known (and most notorious work) is The Guitar Lesson (1934), one of the first works to display Balthus’s use of young girls to discuss serious themes.
At the time, Balthus was friends with Paris cultural elite, and Picasso, Breton, Man Ray, and Giacometti were amongst his social set. He designed sets for plays staged by Albert Camus and Antonin Artaud, and was generally well respected as an artist.
In 1937 he married an old friend and one of his former muses, with who he had two sons. However, as the 1940s brought war and political disrupt to Europe, he took his family to the countryside and then to Switzerland, before returning to Paris in 1946.

Mature Period
With his social circle, Balthus was well represented in a number of exhibitions.
His work was represented in New York by Pierre Matisse Gallery, and by 1956 he had his first major museum solo exhibition at New York’s MoMA. By this time, Balthus’s tendency towards the eccentric had become well established.
By 1964 he moved to Rome, settling in with the cultural set there and befriending legends like Federico Fellini, while serving as director of the French Academy in Rome at Villa Medici. He moved to Switzerland in 1977 and married his second (much younger) wife, with whom he had a son who died young.
The mystique that endures regarding Balthus’s life and career was in no doubt fostered by the artist, but it is clear that his eccentricities contributed to his establishment in the art history canon.
In 1968 a retrospective of Balthus’s work was held at London’s Tate Gallery and in preparation the painter sent them the following:
NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS KNOWN. NOW LET US LOOK AT THE PICTURES. REGARDS. B.
Balthus continued to work but led a more and more reclusive life with his wife. He died in 2001 in Switzerland.
Legacy
While Balthus’s subject matter led him to be considered controversial, he was always well respected during his lifetime between cultural artistic groups.
An interesting way to think of his legacy is to see his entire life as part of his artwork; with elements of performance (the reclusive artist) and a direct challenge to the tendency of cultural institutions to attribute meaning in paintings to the artist’s biography. By requesting that his details be left out of presentation of his work, Balthus both heightened mystique about himself and his relation to his subject matter.
A recent 2013 survey at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has brought Balthus back into a contemporary dialogue. His work speaks both to the art brut mentality idealized in Henry Darger’s epic works of prepubescent girls, as well as to the classic impressionist focus on young bodies (Degas’ dancers come to mind).
Balthus’s role in early Modern artwork is interesting to consider in terms of how he used content to disrupt the traditional viewing experience of oil portraiture in history. While his contemporaries sought new techniques of using paint and capturing imagery, Balthus maintained a traditional style, which in some ways, made his effect even more subtle but jarring. It has taken time for the art historical canon to recognize Balthus’s contributions, but in recent years he has been the focus of major exhibitions, and has once again become a topic of conversation.