The Case of Balthus

Through a Glass Darkly

Lev Mendes

June 28, 2018 Issue New York Review of Books

In his informative and reflective article Lev Mendes tries to answer the questions or problems stated by the author of the petition to the Met against the display of the painting "Thérèse Dreaming":

Mia Merrill, the author of the petition addressing Thérèse Dreaming, writes that “given the current climate around sexual assault and allegations that become more public each day, in showcasing this work for the masses without providing any type of clarification, The Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification of children.” The implication is that the achievement of Thérèse Dreaming has been purchased at the expense of its young female model; that Balthus has, in effect, objectified and exploited her for his own perverse purposes; and that the Met, by continuing to display the painting, is complicit in those perversions. Balthus’s work has thus been assimilated into our contemporary reckoning with patriarchal abuse and privilege: the coercive sexual and ideological power men wield over women in ways both implicit and explicit.

This touches a set of central problems: when does exploitation start, when becomes showing art the founding for voyeurism, are the current moralities the guideline for judgement of art? Shouldn't we close ALL museums since showing art ALWAYS "speaks" to a spectator, a viewer, and always is an expression of power and might in a dobule way: of the time of that art in question and at the same time of our present society who confronts itself with these testimonies of power, abuse, exploitation?

This problem is interwoven with the state of the society, the understanding of "public" and "private", "freedom" and "controversy". One can think, for example, of the famous and challenging book by Richard Sennett, "The fall of public man", his study of the developement of the term "public", the changes of "roles" etc. The book has been published in 1977, a time with no social media as we have them today, a time of a different public. The roles of the spectator have changed as well as those of the actors. Especially the phanomenon of "participation" and involvement have changed too. Do we need therefore a new puritanic cleaning, a secular purification as protection on the one side, as education and guidance on the other?

The trends today correspond to the rigid aniconism we know especially from the islamic world. To get an idea of something, meaning, to visualize something (in German more explicitly expressed "sich ein Bild machen") as to gain knowledge or to understand ("I see" - meaning "I follow understandingly") is considered a sin. Today many feminists and gender activists support old religious habits to suppress and prohibit "seeing" and "showing"; soon, this aniconism will lead to strictor forms of cencorship and guidelining of thinking, what is allowed to think. New autodafes will be executed, as many libraries are already cleaned and crusades for further pruifications are under way (inclusive the "trigger warnings" to prevent the potential victim, the week person, from suffering by being confronted with uncontrolled and not approbiated thoughts, sayings or pictures). This will affect the communication of thought generally, the philosophy and politics. The new puritanical regime will strengthen the bunker mentalities of the observed and controlled pseudo personalities. The low spirit of the dark ages will cover the world, as it does already in many places.

["Through a glass darkly" refers to a Christian biblical saying (For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.) with the hope of total knowledge. If one would follow that belief (ideology), one would know the temporality of all knowledge. Obviously, the eliminiation of unwanted knowledge of the present time wouldn't guarantee the prevention of knowledge beyond the partialities in the future, an achievement which is promised by that very belief. The cleansing, the purification as protection of any holistic views and knowledge can't be executed thoroughly, the process of knowledge's accumulation is everlasting.]