Painting

Guy Davenport on Balthus

“…Both Balthus and Spencer give us the surface of the canvas as a mimesis of natural textures, not paint. In Picasso, Van Gogh, on out to…Pollock, it is paint. The difference is a philosophical one, perhaps even a religious one.

Spencer’s iconography of saws, ironwork, human flesh reseen without the authority of neoclassical conventions, kettles, drying laundry, the location of shadows in naked light, parallels Balthus’s return to a realism of an accomplished eye that demands accuracy of detail and that generalizes nothing.”

- Guy Davenport, from “A Balthus Notebook”

Jeune fille a la fenetre (1955)