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The Street

Painted 1933 by Balthus

Balthus didn't formally affiliate with Surrealism, but he's included in Desmond Morris's 101 Surrealists, and paintings like this show why. The street's fairly realistic, but the people are bizarre, and bizarre on many levels--their actions, their proportions, their expressions, and the geometric simplification of their figures into blocks, tubes and arcs. The workman's jacket hangs exactly parallel to the street; the chef seems part stovepipe; the children, stunted gnomes.

'The Street', painted 1933 by Balthus. Click to enlarge.
The whole scene feels dreamlike, yet Balthus doesn't call it one. Not his, anyway. Maybe his figures are dreaming. They sure ignore the alarming scene at far left; but apart from these two, everyone seems lost in themselves, trapped in a moment, motionless... inevitable. Creepy and serene together.

SOURCE: Balthus by Jean Leymarie (1979), p.18


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