THE BALTHUS ENIGMA — The New Yorker

  From the New Yorker

INVESTIGATIONS about the painter Balthus, Balthasar Klossowski… He was

born February 29, 1908… Writer tells about calling Balthus in Switzerland in

1990, and fixed a date for a visit… Three weeks later, he arrived at

Le Grand Chalet, which was built between 1752 and 1756, and contains

forty-five rooms… Balthus and his wife Setsuko bought it in the late seventies…

Describes the opulent setting… His art, he maintained, had been misunderstood:

it was neither graphic nor mysterious. Above all, it was not autobiographical…

Balthus is one of the great loners of twentieth-century art; he belongs to no school, no “ism,” but his own.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/09/06/1999_09_06_034_TNY_LIBRY_000018986#ixzz2MuDSHPSR