Met refuses to remove ‘voyeuristic’ painting
Thousands sign online petition against portrait of young girl on display at famous New York gallery
NEW York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is refusing to take down a controversial 80-year-old painting of a young girl, despite an online petition against the work gaining almost 10,000 signatures in less than a week.
Mia Merrill, a human resources manager at a Manhattan financial company, started the petition against the work by Polish-french artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known as Balthus.
The artist has long been controversial for his portraits of young girls in various states of undress, but it was his 1938 painting Thérèse Dreaming – which shows a 12-year-old girl wistfully reclining, her legs open and underwear visible – that prompted Ms Merrill to petition the museum, arguing that the Met was promoting paedophilia by continuing to hang it.
“I put together a petition asking the Met to take down a piece of art that is undeniably romanticising the sexualisation of a child,” she tweeted. “If you are a part of the #metoo movement or ever think about the implications of art on life, please support this effort.”
She added: “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.”
She clarified that she was not calling for the painting to be destroyed, but just removed from view or given additional context. “I would consider this petition a success if the Met included a message as brief as, ‘Some viewers find this piece offensive or disturbing, given Balthus’s artistic infatuation with young girls’,” she added.
In a 2013 review of the Balthus show in The New Republic magazine, Jed Perl, the critic, called Balthus the “last of the mystics who transformed 20th century art”. He wrote that his works “can be properly appreciated only when we accept them as unabashedly mystical, the flesh a symbol of the spirit, the girl’s dawning self-awareness an emblem of the artist’s engagement with the world.”
However, Christian Viveros-fauné, a New York-based Chilean art critic, writing in The Village Voice, said: “The original upskirt artist, Balthus devoted a career to obsessively depicting female pubescent sexuality. Today, there is no question that Balthus was a paedophile.”
The Met issued a statement in response to the petition, refusing to remove the work. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s mission is to ‘collect, study, conserve, and present significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas’.
“Moments such as this provide an
‘Balthus devoted a career to obsessively depicting pubescent sexuality’
opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present, and encouraging the continuing evolution of existing culture through informed discussion and respect for creative expression.”
According to the Met’s description, the work depicts Balthus’s neighbour Thérèse Blanchard, who was about 12 or 13 at the time.