Balthus' THE STREET: A Nymphet's Crotch Groped Before & After the MoMA

Balthus' The Street: Before (1933) and After (1955) the MoMA

We're reading Weber's Balthus: A Biography in preparation of the second edition of Nymphalis Carmen: Nympholepsy in Nabokov’s Oeuvre. 

We asked and answered the following question in Nymphalis Carmen:

And who was one of Nabokov's favorite painters? Based on my leading question, you may have been able to guess that it is none other than Balthasar Klossowski de Rola or simply Balthus. Nabokov shared in Strong Opinions: 

"The aspects of Picasso that I emphatically dislike are the sloppy products of his old age. I also loathe old Matisse. A contemporary artist I do admire very much, though not only because he paints Lolita-like creatures, is Balthus." (167) 

And Balthus shared, translated into English, in the documentary Balthus the Painter (1996), referring to Nabokov: “I think we feel the same thing in the presence of young girls.”

In addition, we've blogged about Balthus in the past. For example, we wrote about how, despite over 8,000 virtual signatures on an (online) petition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art refused to removed Balthus' Thérèse Dreaming (1938). But I didn't realize that The Street (1933), which I've passed several times at the MoMA, had a previous - even more salacious version. 

Here's MoMA's description of The Street:

The Street, Balthus's first large painting, was one of several that scandalized audiences when it was included in the artist's earliest solo exhibition, in Paris in 1934. Balthus rendered each of the figures in his scene of Paris's rue Bourbon-le-Chateau frozen mid-movement; none of them seem to notice the aggressive sexual struggle underway at the painting's far left [...] The Street was of great interest to Surrealist artists for its rendering of a crowded street as an uncanny site of mental isolation and for its exploration of sexual taboos.

Intriguingly, the art history major who wrote that blurb didn't mention that The Street was modified by Balthus in 1955 at the request of James Thrall Soby. 

Here's a summary of Weber's writing on the history of The Street:

Soby, whose taste in art was "bold enough to confront the formidable", purchased The Street in Paris in 1936 and promptly placed it on a wall in his Farmington, Connecticut home. Soby admitted that The Street hadn't sold in three years due to "[...] the depiction of the young man at the edge of ecstasy reaching over the hem of the girl's hiked-up skirt toward the young girl's genitals."

Soby was "delighted in the shock value" of The Street, he had "a lively sense of humor", "a deep pleasure in upsetting the bourgeoisie" and "[h]e was keyed up by - in his own words - the "young girl being seized by the crotch [...]"

However, Soby didn't anticipate that his five-year-old step-son and his playmates would "[...] titter wildly over The Street." Consequently, Soby placed the painting in a fireproof vault. 

However, in 1955, after Reverend James L. McLane, who ironically hung some of Balthus' "most provocative" paintings of nymphets in his church in Los Angeles, "bawled [him] out for three hours for being so cowardly as to hide a great painting away in a darkened vault", Soby exhibited and bequeathed the painting to the MoMA after it had been modified by Balthus. "[...] the Mongolian boy's hand had been moved very slightly to a less committed position on the young girl's body, though his eyes were tense with the same fever."

The Street has been exhibited in the MoMA at least eight times. Here are three examples:

 "Balthus." December 19, 1956–February 3, 1957

 "Selections from the Collections, Photography, Painting and Sculpture, Architecture and Design"
March 8, 1982–February/March 1983

 "The James Thrall Soby Bequest" March 22, 1979–May 9, 1979

The Met Breuer, Egon Schiele & Nude Teen Watercolors

We went to The Met Breuer to see three Egon Schiele pieces that are exhibited in the Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection. 

Here's an excerpt from The Met Breuer's Exhibition Overview:

This exhibition at The Met Breuer presents a selection of some fifty works from The Met's Scofield Thayer Collection—a collection that is best known for paintings by artists of the school of Paris, and a brilliant group of erotic and evocative watercolors, drawings, and prints by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso, whose subjects, except for a handful, are nudes. The exhibition is the first time these works have been shown together, and provides a focused look at this important collection; it also marks the centenary of the deaths of Klimt and Schiele.

Below are the three Schiele pieces with descriptions from the museum:

Seated Nude Girl Clasping Her Left Knee (1918)

"Here, the young daughter of one of Schiele's models shields her nudity with a pulled-up knee, unlike in the lithograph of Girl (1918) [...]"

Girl (1918)

"The girl leans her head pensively on what might be a pillow, and by opening her legs unselfconsciously reveals her pubic area. Seemingly oblivious to the implication and potential reception of the girl's exposure." ["Seemingly" is probably a fitting word, because there's a chance that the girl was not "oblivious".]

Standing Nude Girl, Facing Left (1918)

"Here, the same daughter of one of Schiele's models appears in three-quarter profile."

To put the three pieces into perspective, it may help to read Jeanette Zwingenberger's description of Schiele's Two Girls (Lovers) (1911) in her book Egon Schiele.

Two Girls (Lovers) (1911) 

Coupled with The Met Breuer's admission that the watercolors are "erotic and evocative" and Zwingenberger's admission that Schiele had an "obsession with all aspects of the erotic", it's very safe to say that The Met Breuer has sided with art, in the art versus [child] pornography debate.

Cody Delistraty wrote in his post "Rethinking Schiele" on The Paris Review :

Egon Schiele first began hosting teenage girls at his studio in Neulengbach, Austria, around 1910 [...] girls, often from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds, would come spend time there with him and his model-slash-lover Walburga Neuzil, whom he called Wally. Schiele was only twenty at the time. Wally was seventeen. The age of consent in Austria was fourteen (as it is today), and their relationship wasn’t much of a scandal. What was a scandal was Schiele’s painting the children and teenagers who came by his studio and, as would be written in his arrest warrant two years later, his “failing to keep erotic nudes in a sufficiently safe place”—that is, exposing these young people to his supposedly pornographic paintings and drawings.

Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig (1912)

In April 1912, Schiele was arrested and accused of “seducing” Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig. Mossig, a thirteen-year-old girl from Neulengbach whose father was an esteemed naval officer, had asked Schiele and Neuzil to take her to Vienna to live with her grandmother. Like many young people, she wanted to escape her provincial town. The artist and his lover agreed to take her, but once they got to Vienna, Mossig had a change of heart and wanted to return home. The next day, Schiele and Neuzil dutifully returned her. In the meantime, however, her father had gone to the police and filed charges of kidnapping and statutory rape against Schiele. That the young man was an artist—and one who depicted younger women—helped fuel the father’s suspicions. A third charge was leveled, too: public immorality for exposing young people to his art.

When the police came to arrest Schiele, they took around 125 of his drawings, classifying them as “degenerate”; as a symbolic gesture, a judge burned one of them in court. In total, Schiele would spend only twenty-four days in prison after the first two charges—kidnapping and statutory rape—were dropped, but the charges of degeneracy stuck, as they have stuck to his legacy.

Tatjana in Color (2003)

In 2003, Tatjana in Color, a play written by Julia Jordan, was performed at A Culture Project on Bleecker street here in New York City. Jerry Tallmer wrote in his review of the play, "The Egon Schiele affair from the girl’s point of view" in the The Villager: 

The play sweeps us deliciously into her version (and kid sister Antonia’s woozy version) of events leading up to and beyond Schiele’s arrest in April 1912 for the rape of 12-year-old Tatjana, and the trial-by-magistrate that ended with Schiele serving 21 days in prison for corruption of the morals of a minor.

Balthus @ the Gagosian & the MET: Art or Teen Pornography?

I went to the Gagosian's new ground floor-gallery on 76th and Madison avenue this past Friday to see the Balthus: The Last Studies exhibit. The exhibition displayed a series of little-known Polaroids that Balthus took of Anna Whali, who was the youngest daughter of Balthus' physician. Balthus started photographing Anna when she was eight-years-old.

Anna was topless in most of the Polaroids, and the exhibit reminds me of the subjective nature of the United States child pornography laws. For example, Balthus and David Hamilton are considered artists, but photographer Donald Raymond Croft II was charged with child pornography in 2012 for his photographs of nude nymphets.  

From Vanity Fair (October 2013)

BALTHUS Untitled, c. 1999–2000 at the Gagosian

On Saturday I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) to see Balthus Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations and once again the lines were blurred between art and nymphet pornography. For example, Balthus' pre-teen neighbor, Thérèse Blanchard, is posing provocatively in a number of the paintings in the exhibit. 

BALTHUS Girl and Cat (1937) at the MET

However, there is at least one Balthus that even the Gagosian or the MET won't touch and that is Balthus' Guitar Lesson. According to New York magazine, the Guitar Lesson debuted in Paris in 1934 in an backroom exhibit that lasted for fifteen days. Then in 1977, the painting was exhibited for a month in Pierre Matisse’s mid-town Manhattan art gallery. From 1977 to 1982, it sat in the storage area of the Museum of Modern Art. And after being exchanged between buyers over the years, it landed in the possession of multi-billionaire Stavros Niarchos. 

Guitar Lesson (1934)

Update 03/23/14: The Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany has cancelled the “Balthus: the Last Pictures” exhibit that was scheduled to open next month. More details can be found here.

Balthus' Polaroids via Purple Magazine

Update 3/20/16: Purple magazine published "Balthus Polariods" in the S/S 2016 issue 25. From Benoit Peverelli's presentation we learned that a few years after Balthus' death, thousands of documents were discovered in his Rossinière, Switzerland based studio at the Grand Chalet. Balthus found it difficult to draw due to his age which is why he switched to using a Polaroid camera to capture his nymphets. The Polaroids were used for Balthus' last six paintings - three of which were never finished. 

Balthus the Painter (1908-2001) [Documentary]:
Anna Whali Visits Balthus