Nicholas Fox Weber is a graduate of Yale and Columbia Universities. He is the author of several books (including The Art of Babar) and the Director of the Albers Foundation. He writes frequently for the New Yorker.
A highly regarded art historian (Patron Saints), Weber ingeniously structures his biography of 91-year-old Balthazar Klossowska, or Balthus, by draping his voluminous investigations over facts that emerged during his visit with the famously reclusive painter and his Japanese wife at their elegant Swiss chalet in 1991. A French citizen of Polish ancestry who has claimed descent from Polish nobility, the Romanovs and Lord Byron, Balthus survived a childhood of economic hardship and displacement with the help of his mother's lover, poet Ranier Maria Rilke. In his work, Balthus uses Old Master coloring to depict scenes in canvases whose atmospheric haze and violated figures (many of them highly eroticized adolescents) belie the compositions' sturdy grids. Weber explores Balthus's many influences, from the work of Piero della Francesca to psychoanalytic theory and his brother's fascination with the Marquis de Sade. Again and again, Weber insists that the artist articulate the intentions behind each and every element in his work. Of course, no painter could, and Balthus, whether from age, puckishness or the sincere conviction that his art must speak for itself, toys with Weber throughout their conversations. The friction between the two forces Weber to do his ownÄat times heroicÄresearch. Whether visiting a sex crimes unit in Manhattan, the New York apartment of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos or an acquaintance from Balthus's days as director of the French Academy in Rome, Weber assiduously records the evidence for his psychosexual view of Balthus's paintings. In the process, Weber does justice to both the artist and his art. If he occasionally adopts a gossipy tone, that's a minor flaw in a book that will remain a splendid account of a complex life and as fine an artist's biography as this season is likely to produce. 16 color plates not seen by PW; 116 b&w illus. First serial to the New Yorker. U.K rights, Weidenfeld &Nicholson. Reader Subscriptions Book Club selection. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
With the artist's approval, Weber (Patron Saints) has created a portrait of the elusive and mysterious Balthus. Probing the inner man and his work, the author partially explains the mystique that has surrounded this critically acclaimed and self-invented painter whose surreal, sexually charged images are both disturbing and haunting. The artist would like to set the record straight for posterity, insisting that there is nothing psychological about his work, that he is merely painting everyday life. But through extensive meetings with Balthus over a period of years at his castle in Switzerland and a study of various documents, Weber interprets the myth and symbolic representations in the significant paintings, peeling away their meaning layer by layer to uncover the man who made them. More than official in tone (unlike prior biographers, such as Jean Leymarie) Weber is questioning, affectionate, and convincingÄyet he seems to solve only half of the puzzle. While the length of this well-illustrated book may be a deterrent, it should create a buzz in art circles, keeping everyone guessingÄwhich may have been Balthus's intention all along. Recommended for larger public libraries and all 20th-century art collections.ÄEllen Bates, New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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