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Balthus
Balthus (Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) was a shy, private painter who's listed in Desmond Morris's 101 Surrealists, though to my mind his work's surreal only in the original sense Picasso meant: surpassing realism, realer than real, baring the truth of things. Picasso felt the Surrealist Movement generally fell short of this; but Balthus sometimes achieves it. His landscapes and interiors are impressionist, not surreal at all, but his people have a grotesque, dreamlike intensity, for he uses strong color, shape and gesture to show not their appearance but how they feel to him. As far as I know they don't tell dreams, but I wanted to include a few like The Street, The Room and the infamous Guitar Lession. A few more explicitly say they're dreams--but of his models and subjects (true or not, I don't know.)
Among the Surrealists he's most closely affiliated with Dorothea Tanning, who also painted the inner lives of subjects (girls and women) who most male Surrealists saw only as decorative sex objects. Their work looks quite different--hers is bratty, active, funny, erotic and creepy, his calm, even monumental, frozen in one moment. But compare Balthus's The Room with Tanning's Children's Games or Palaestra and tell me they're not related.
RELATED TOPICS: Surrealism - Dorothea Tanning - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
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The World Dream Bank has 4000+ dreams plus 1000 more pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.
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THE DREAM (1): by Balthus, 1955-6.
Balthus, a notoriously shy sort-of-surrealist, never showed his own dreams, but did
occasionally paint those of his subjects, whether real models or imaginary figures... |
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GUITAR LESSON: by Balthus, 1934.
A guitar tutor strips her student, playing her like a guitar. The girl somehow forgot to wear panties;
someone's either dreaming or acting out a fantasy, but is it teacher, student, painter... all three?
CAUTION: RAPE FANTASY? |
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THE ROOM : by Balthus, 1952-4.
A dark room. A grotesque little figure fiercely flings open the drapes; light blasts in on
a naked girl who squirms away from the light like a worm uncovered under a stone...
CAUTION: NUDITY |
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THE STREET: by Balthus, 1933.
Balthus paints a real street in Paris, but populated with bizarre figures
dreamily going about their business, ignoring us and each other...
CAUTION: ASSAULT |
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