Arty Farty Friday ~ Shock Art : Beardsley & Balthus

A look at two artists who liked to shock. Aubrey Beardsley, about whom I posted back in 2007, a copy of that post is repeated below; and the artist known as Balthus. Of this pair I find Beardsley's art to be far more appealing, and talented. I've considered posting about Balthus a couple of times in the past but balked, due to his paintings' content. Oh, what the heck, may as well make him part of this "shocking" pair!

(This is an extra-long post, so nothing further until Monday.)


#1 Aubrey Beardsley

First From an article HERE by by Erin Smith :

Beardsley expressed a sexuality in his drawings which mocked. the prudishness of the Victorian age, and advocated full freedom to explore sexuality. He shocked Victorians with his grotesque and highly unnatural style, and drawings of nude bodies which were not idealized. Nonetheless, his drawings do not explicitly depict fornication or denigrate women. For these reasons, Beardsley's art can arguably be placed in the sphere of erotica rather than pornography.

Though he was an important leader during the "Decadence" and an innovator in Art Nouveau, his art stands out as one of the most shocking and fantastic critiques of Victorian society. Through the medium of his highly symbolic and esoteric drawings, Beardsley revealed the hypocrisy of the Victorian patriarchal social structure. Victorian society tagged his art as controversial because Beardsley became involved with social issues, and supported sexual freedom. However, this was not the strongest reason for his controversy. For repressed Victorians though, Beardsley's most dangerous weapon was his perceptiveness: in his drawings, they could see visual representations of their most latent desires and anxieties.

And from my 2007 post:

Aubrey Beardley may not be a name well-known in the USA. He was an English artist/illustrator of the late 19th century. Homosexual, individualistic, original and an expert draftsman, he lived a short but probably very interesting life. He died of tuberculosis at the young age of 25. He managed to produce a large volume of illustrations for magazines and books in those few years. His work is instantly recognisable.
Born 21 August, 1872 in Brighton, England, according to Astrotheme his time of birth was 5.18pm. I'm skeptical about this, wondering where such precise information came from in a country where time of birth is not routinely recorded. Still - it might be correct, so I've used it. It gives Capricorn rising, Saturn on the ascendant, which may account for the large volume of work he managed to produce in such a short lifespan.



His Sun at 28 Leo is within a degree of the Vertex probably making that area extra sensitive to transits. On the day he died, March 16 1898, Mars was opposing his natal Sun/Vertex from 26* Aquarius.

Natal Mars and Uranus at 1 and 3 Leo tell me where his determined-to-shock originality came from. Mercury in Virgo would have endowed the attention to detail his expert draftsmanship required, being 8th house could account for the sexual content of his work. A Grand Trine in Earth involving Saturn, Mercury and Pluto, which in some people might manifest as a good dose of common sense, because the planets at the birth time given by Astrotheme occupy 8th, 12th and 3rd houses more likely manifest here as an almost obsessive concentration on sex - which I suppose IS earthy !
His bunch of Leo planets ensured he made himself felt in that late 19th century world.

Beardsley was one of those mortals most definitely "born before his time", even so, along with Oscar Wilde and a close group of like-minded friends he brought homosexuality out into the light of day - to the horror of many strait-laced individuals.

"His formally elegant style, inspired in part by Greek vase painting, in which ornamental rhythm of line combines with a perverse and wickedly satiric imagination to create unforgettable images, often hilarious, frequently erotic, and sometimes deeply moving

A highly original creator, he transformed the art of illustration and profoundly influenced artists of his own and subsequent generations.


His expert draftsmanship made his drawings particularly suitable to the technical advances in printing at the end of the nineteenth century. Perhaps most important, however, he came to maturity at a time peculiarly suited to his genius, when theories of decadence and aestheticism gave license to the expression of perverse sexuality and to fetishism of all kinds. His work is sexually frank and, occasionally, pornographic. "
( from here.).

There's an excellent set of 4 videos (each 10 to 15 mins. long) on Beardsley and his work, at YouTube. Here's Part 1, with links to the other 3.



Part 2

part 3

part 4


Google Image has more extreme examples of Beardsley's work.

#2 Balthus

From Britannica.com

Balthus, pseudonym of Balthazar Klossowski, also spelled Balthasar Klossowsky (born February 29, 1908, Paris, France—died February 18, 2001, La Rossinière, Switzerland), reclusive French painter who, in the midst of 20th-century avant-gardism, explored the traditional categories of European painting: the landscape, the still life, the subject painting, and the portrait. He is best known for his controversial depictions of adolescent girls.

His parents, both artistic and intellectual, from Poland and East Prussia settled in Berlin at the start of World War I. His parents separated before the end of the war and their son divided his time between Germany and Switzerland. His mother's friend, poet Rainer Maria Rilke, encouraged the young would-be artist to publish an early book of his drawings about Mitsou, a lost cat, for which Rilke also contributed a preface.

In 1924 Balthus settled in returned to Paris and studied painting. He was able to support himself from commissions for portraits and stage sets. His paintings at this point were, at first glance, fairly run-of-the-mill interiors and landscapes, but seeming conservative they became controversial
"...the scenes often have an erotic, disturbing atmosphere and are often peopled with pensive adolescent girls. The presence of these languid, dreamy girls has often given rise to charges of pedophilic overtones; however, the artist’s depiction of these girls has also been interpreted as a truthful, evocative portrayal of the awkwardness of adolescence."
He spent the last two decades of the century as a virtual recluse in Switzerland, where he lived in a grand, 18th-century chalet with his second wife. He continued to paint into his 90s.


For more on Balthus and an exhibition of his work see
Bizarre Balthus show reveals artist's fixation with cats and young girls
More character study than retrospective, the Met's provocative new Balthus exhibition has an unsettling undertone, by Jason Farago at The Guardian (2013).

Or
Cat Fancy
‘Balthus: Cats and Girls’ and ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Cats’
By Jennifer B. McDonald at the NYT Sunday Book Review (2013)

I'm still hesitating about posting images of any of his more controversial paintings. Typing "Balthus" into the Google Image search box will bring up dozens of 'em. Or... here's a video from YouTube showing some of his works; and three reasonably safe ones below, just to prove he really could paint!

 The Cat of La Méditerranée 1949

Born 29 February 1908 at 1:00 PM in Paris, France. Data from Astrodienst.

Two T-squares:
#1 links the opposition of Moon-Jupiter by two square aspects to Mars
#2 links the opposition of Neptune/North node-Uranus by two square aspects to Venus.

Venus (the arts) though in uncomfortable position in that second T-square also has a helpful sextile to Pluto (eroticism).

His Pisces Sun/Mercury is in harmonious trine to Pisces' ruler, Neptune (creativity, dreams, imagination). If birth time is accurate, Neptune is close to the ascendant angle, giving it extra emphasis.

Sun/Mercury and Moon are semi-sextile. The mix of Pisces/Aquarius isn't one of the worst "next-door neighbour mixes", and in Balthus' case does kind of describe his gravitation to imagined scenes with an element of shock involved.

Hmmm. Could be an uncomfortable chart, but with forgiving features, and fairly well balanced element-wise.