Title of Artwork: “Therese Dreaming”
Artwork by Balthus
Year Created 1938
Summary of Therese Dreaming
It’s impossible to tell whether Balthus’ model, Thérèse Blanchard, is conscious of her surroundings or if she’s lost in contemplation, as the title implies. It is likely that Blanchard was twelve or thirteen years old at the time the artist created this piece. She’d appear in at least nine more pieces, either alone herself or with her cat or brother…. The topic of the kid, for Balthus as for many other contemporary painters, was a wellspring of raw energy that had not yet been shaped by social expectations. Adolescent sexuality was a powerful source of psychological vulnerability and lack of inhibition for many early twentieth-century avant-garde painters, from Paul Gauguin to Edvard Munch to Pablo Picasso, who projected these subjective perceptions into their work. Thérèse Dreaming, despite its disturbing appearance, draws on this legacy.
All About Therese Dreaming
This painting was completed in the year after the completion of Girl and Cat and at the tail-end of the time period in which Therese was painted. While the posture of this girl is similar to that of the previous piece, the composition conveys a greater feeling of anxiety for the subject. Her eyes are closed and her chin is tilted away from the camera, as if trying to hide something. When she is an adult, Therese’s physique has a more defined shape, with longer legs and a slimmer face and arms than when she was a teenager. Even though she is dreaming, her facial expressions indicate that she is ambivalent about the shared sexual experience she is having, with a combination of euphoric pleasure and discomfort or even agony.
Even the cat has a new function to play now, as a predator, although a domestic one, attentively and sensually licking the bowl at Therese’s feet instead of a would-be steadfast sentinel.
An increase in the sensuous sensation portrayed, as well as the ambiguity of the subject, may allude to the artist’s imminent loss of innocence in his relationship with Therese, since he stopped painting her after the work was completed the year after it was created.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Therese Dreaming Controversy
Millennial feminists Mia Merrill and Anna Zuccarro started an exquisitely passive-aggressive online petition to force the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses the painting, to either remove it or refurbish it with a note accusing both the artist and the painting of sexism. The controversy erupted around Balthus’ scandalous 1938 painting Thérèse Dreaming, which depicts a prepubescent girl in an unguarded sexual pose, last December. The petitioners contradict themselves by denying that they want “this painting censored, destroyed, or never seen again,” while also proposing to “remove the piece from that particular gallery, or provide more context in the painting’s description.” The Metropolitan Institution of Art’s answer was very clear: the museum would not remove the artwork or put any “trigger warning” language to its walls. Several major media outlets applauded this decision, and The New York Times wrote extensively about it in a storey on December 8 that included three images: one of the offending artwork and two posed pictures of the political sisters.
Will The Met Remove Therese Dreaming?
There will be no removal from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public exhibition of a contentious picture by a French painter known as Balthus. It’s called “Thérèse Dreaming” and it shows a young girl in a provocative position that exposes her panties to the viewer’s gaze. 4th of December, 2017
Therese Dreaming is not the only artwork of Balthus to be deemed highly controversial, one other of his famously controversial works are “Guitar Lesson”
(We also have another slight variation of Therese Dreaming, with the only main vidual difference being more contrast, and light.)
Information Citations:
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
