← Balthus (Klossowski de Rola, Balthasar, 1908-2001): Le salon (The Living Room), 1942. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Oil on canvas, 45 1/4 x 57 7/8' (114.8 x 146.9 cm). Estate of John Hay Whitney. Acc. n.: 245.1983.© 2012. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence ↘ Balthus (Klossowski de Rola, Balthasar, 1908-2001): Nature morte a la lampe, 1958. Marseille, Musee Cantini. Huile sur toile, 162 x 130 cm.© 2012. BI, ADAGP, Paris/Scala, Florence
Despite the fact that these are photographs of a real young woman, they are significantly less shocking, less raw, less racy than the Balthus originals, safe sex if you like. As your eyes survey the images en masse, it quickly becomes evident that the girl’s reverie in the paintings has been completely played down. They are not nearly as jarring but jarring enough for the contemporary photography market. It is therefore unsurprising and probably wise that Hara has chosen not to re-imagine one of Balthus’ most notorious works The Guitar Lesson (1934) which caused outrage at his first exhibition in Paris due to its sexually explicit portrayal of a young girl arched on her back over the lap of her female teacher, whose hands are positioned on the girl as for playing the guitar: one near her exposed crotch, another grasping her hair. This is photography as the product of a calculated artificial tableaux that returns
image-making to what great pretwentieth-century painters were once doing: setting up representational narrative scenes. But Hara’s artistic practice struggles with the limitations of its chosen manner of expression to truly render the potency of Balthus’ timeless masterpieces. Instead, Hara opts for a combination of the historical feel of a documentary record with the drama of a film still. He specialises in a mood that is altogether more serene, in turn ushering in a sense of unreality and otherworldliness that presides over these staged pictures – the obverse of what Balthus accomplished. In one work entitled A Study of ‘The Salon’, a young girl lies suggestively before our gaze. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is slightly open as she sleeps; she is unaware that she is the object of our attention. Hara has placed the same girl on the floor in the foreground, on all fours parallel to the picture plane, the
hisaji hara
The chance we are given to unlock this netherworld of strange, constructed beauty, and peer into these intimate, uninhibited yet ambiguous moments, is familiar.
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