A dark room. A geometric gnome (child, old woman, dream creature?) fiercely flings the drapes open; the light blasts in on a naked girl who turns away. Her nudity's not sexy, but pale and squirmy, like a slug startled under a stone. "Face it!" the drape-puller's gesture shrieks. "Face the light!"

Or is it "I'll expose you to the world"?

Balthus isn't generally thought of as a surrealist (though Desmond Morris in his 101 Surrealists claims him as one), but I see echoes of (unquestionably surrealist) Dorothea Tanning--she too painted the inner lives of girls and women who most male Surrealists saw only as decorative sex objects. Their work looks quite different, but compare Tanning's Children's Games or Palaestra to The Room and tell me they're not related.

--Chris Wayan--

PICTURE SOURCE: Balthus by Jean Leymarie (1979), p.34

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