Last Friday, September 27th, I decided to spend my afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the MET for short. As a child, I visited various New York City museums for school field trips, the MET being one of them. Last week was the first time I went in years and I still remember the feeling of walking up that grand staircase to enter the building. My favorite exhibit was always the Egyptian Art wing as the various artifacts collected from hundreds of years ago fascinated me.
I decided to see a new exhibit, one that was temporary and exclusive to the museum. The exhibit, Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations, attracted my attention and definitely left an impression on my curious mind. When I first approached the exhibit I expected to see a bunch of sculptures or paintings of girls and cats. While curious, I did not have high expectations of what the exhibit would show me and I surely did not expect that something so seemingly simple could be so artistically sophisticated.
When entering the exhibit, the first thing visitors see is a sign that warns about disturbing images that may unsettle guests. Coming in with this mindset, I immediately thought that the pictures would be inappropriate or upsetting. Walking in with an open mind was key to understanding the artwork. The room has a large open space in the center for people to walk around without crowding around the paintings. One specific painting that struck me as unusual was of a young girl, most likely in her early teens, lying down on a chair with her legs spread out. Any typical person would assume she was posing in a provocative sense. Upon further analysis and a closer view of her position, I thought she was merely exhausted, as any pre-teenager would be, because she was on her menstrual cycle. I immediately felt her pain because, being a female as well, I have gone through the same experience.
Balthus, the artist, purposely chose models that were in the beginning of their adolescence and portrayed them as lonely, withdrawn girls whose only companion was a cat. He wanted to show viewers the innocence that surrounds a young girl and how it transforms into something completely different after they have experienced puberty. This transformation is seen through the order in which a person walks through the exhibit. Shaped like a horseshoe, the exhibit draws you in walking straight, then curving over a hook to the left, and back down straight. This sequence is designed for visitors to obtain a better understanding of what Balthus is trying to show in his art, which is that innocence is present through a girl’s life, even after adolescence, but it changes into a more complex characteristic.
The first section focuses on young girls, while the second puts more emphasis on older girls, primarily in their mid-teenage years. These portraits convey them as more accustomed to their natural situation, but still displaying an aura of pure innocence. In this section, Balthus paints two portraits that are almost identical and the gallery places them parallel to each other. Standing in the center of the open room, I glanced to my right and to my left to view the paintings, and was able to notice few differences, such as the fact that one has a cat and the other does not. Many people would be confused and wonder why the artist bothered to paint another and merely remove the painting of the cat, but I delved further into this idea. I thought it represented this transformation of a young girl into a young woman and how she doesn’t need the feline companion anymore to accompany her when she was a child. This essence of maturity encloses every woman, but it almost always occurs after they have completely experienced puberty.
The third section, which was the end curve of this U-shaped exhibit, displayed portraits of young women no longer girls. Balthus showed this through his paintings of completely naked women who, as it seemed, embraced their body and finally came to be wholly comfortable. This type of innocence is on a different level, a much more enhanced one. Although most people tried to avoid staring directly at the naked women because of embarrassment, the fact that people, especially women, were able to appreciate this art shows that they too are comfortable with the female body. Even though Balthus is a man and cannot understand what a woman goes through with puberty and adulthood, he sympathizes with them and wants to show the world that women are innocent in many aspects and shouldn’t be focused on because of their bodies.
The final section returned back to portraits of young girls, but unlike the first section, these paintings had no cats in them and these girls were not just lounging around, they were lively and completing activities. I came to understand these paintings as the end result of adolescence for girls, that once they become content with their bodies and appreciate the trails of puberty, they can enjoy life as it is and make the most of it. One painting had a girl casually looking out of her window and observing the beautiful view of nature. This section embodies the entire exhibit and the meaning behind Balthus’s artwork.
Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures of the portraits as the museum did not allow it, but I encourage everyone, not just women, to experience this exhibit firsthand. Balthus was not trying to express his feelings solely for women to understand but also for men, and for any age. Everyone can align with what the paintings suggest, but each paintings symbolizes something different for everyone because each person experiences their own unique transformation. It’s about finding your own sense of embodiment and determining how to use that to shape your post-adolescent life.
