I was intrigued about the content and wanted to know the curatorial rationale for the genital paintings. I couldn't really find any. Here we had Hopper without the soul, Lucian Freud without the skill.
I found the paintings to be quite badly painted. The palette was muddy, the paint was slimy and there were intaglio pentimenti clearly visible under the slick surface. The standard was art school at best. The figures were poorly drawn, objectified rather than observed. One was reminded of renaissance workshop nudes painted by virgin apprentices.
There's an interview between Balthus and David Bowie in an old edition of Modern Painters where Balthus discusses his painting "the guitar lesson' and how it was instrumental in making his reputation. I found his source material the other day in an old erotic print.
"As he matured in the early 1930s, Balthus' paintings often depicted pubescent young girls in erotic and voyeuristic poses. One of his most notorious works was The Guitar Lesson (1934), which caused controversy in Paris due to its depiction of a sexually explicit lesbian scene featuring a young girl and her teacher."There were a lot of red stickers and the paintings were around 9000 euros each. The audience is apparently unfazed at the lack of quality.
This appears to answer the exhibition rationale question. If you can't paint, paint porn, it will still sell.
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