In his 1989 book on Balthus—the storied and controversial artist who worked in Paris throughout the twentieth century—Guy Davenport gives one of the most nuanced, literary, and compelling readings of the work of this master. Reading it today highlights the change in perspectives on sexuality and nudity in art in the past thirty years.

Written over several years in his notebooks, Davenport’s distinct reflections on Balthus’s paintings try to explain why his work is so radical, and why it has so often come under scrutiny for its depiction of girls and women. Davenport throws the lens back on the viewer and asks: is it us or Balthus who reads sexuality into these paintings? For Davenport, the answer is clear: Balthus may indeed show us periods in adolescent development that are uncomfortable to view, but the eroticization exists primarily on the part of the viewer.

Arguing that Balthus’s figures are erotic only if we make them so, and that their innocence is more present than anything pornographic in them, Davenport posits that the paintings hold up a mirror to our own perversities and force us, difficultly, to confront them. He writes, “The nearer an artist works to the erotic politics of his own culture, the more he gets its concerned attention. Gauguin’s naked Polynesian girls, brown and remote, escape the scandal of Balthus’s, although a Martian observer would not see the distinction.” Davenport’s critique helps us understand Balthus in our times—something we need more than ever as we crucially confront sexual politics in visual art.

Lucas Zwirner is Head of Content at David Zwirner where he oversees all aspects of gallery publishing through books, web, video, and the podcast Dialogues. Lucas has contributed texts to gallery publications, including Rudolf Zwirner: Give Me the Now (2021), A Balthus Notebook (2020), and Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from The Brooklyn Rail (2017). At David Zwirner Books, he began the ekphrasis series, dedicated to publishing short texts on visual culture by artists and writers, rarely available in English. He has also written on contemporary art and literature for publications The Drift and The Paris Review, and translated books from German and French. His translation of Elias Cannetti's The Profession of the Poet is forthcoming in I WANT TO KEEP SMASHING MYSELF UNTIL I'M WHOLE: An Elias Canetti Reader, edited by Josh Cohen and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.