THE LONELY CROWD

SURROUNDING the elegant figure of the French painter who calls himself Balthus, there has always been an aura of mystery. He rarely exhibits his work, and he himself lives in virtual seclusion in a gloomy medieval chateau near Autun. He has shunned all of the schools that in successive waves have swept over Paris, but he can claim among his fervent admirers some of the most prestigious names in French art. One admirer is Pablo Picasso, who has a prized Balthus painting of two children in his Vallauris villa. Another is Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, who three months ago flabbergasted Paris by making the eccentric Balthus director of the Villa Medici, the home of the academy that France established 295 years ago in Rome in order to benefit from Italian models and taste in painting and architecture.

It was a daring appointment. The Villa Medici, like its parent school, the Beaux-Arts of Paris, has never been known for its tolerance of individualism. Of all the French artists sent there, only David and Ingres stand out as painters of the first rank. Malraux's plan is to give the Villa a new vitality. "This is what I propose," he told his friend Balthus. "A second ambassador in Italy. An ambassador of French culture. I would have conferences, receptions, movement!" Balthus was delighted to accept.

Distinguished Descent. Balthus was born Balthasar Klossowski de Rola in Paris on Feb. 29, 1908. Klossowski is a name that goes back for centuries in the Polish nobility, but he is also descended from the Gordons of Scotland, the most notable of whom was Lord Byron. His father was a noted critic whose house was always full of artists, writers, musicians, poets, psychologists and philosophers. For young Balthasar, the talk in the salon was an education in itself.

It was the mystical German poet Rainer Maria Rilke who started him on his career. One day when he was eleven, Balthus showed the poet some drawings he had made of a pet cat that had suddenly disappeared. The poet was so enchanted that he wrote a little text to accompany the drawings, and in time they were published in a little book. Artist friends of the family--Bonnard, Derain, Vuillard--encouraged the boy and even gave him lessons. By the time he was 28, Balthus was an established painter in his own right.

Unnerving Mood. Despite such distinguished tutelage. Balthus chose to find his chief mentor in the 19th century realist Gustave Courbet, who said: "Create a suggestive magic that contains both the object and the subject, the world outside the artist and the artist himself." But Balthus was also entranced by the surrealists' probings into the unconscious. He painted streets, landscapes and people, all arranged in a well-thought-out design, all strangely still and silent, all a little unnerving in mood.

In his earlier works, though his palette was muted, the focus was as sharp as a photograph. Gradually, the brushwork loosened, until it seemed as if a veil had dropped between the artist and reality. His landscapes may be literal, but they are seen as if in a dream (see color), his people, almost always empty-eyed, seem to live in a trance. They are sleepwalkers, whose minds and bodies are a world apart. And for the most part, they are children, usually adolescent girls.

A Man of Twelve. These canvas Lolitas have aroused much arch speculation, which Balthus turns aside by jokingly pointing out that he was born in a leap year, and that "having had only twelve birthdays, I may consider myself only twelve years old." Outwardly, this man of twelve is every inch the worldly aristocrat who can converse brilliantly, if somewhat distractedly, in French, Italian, German and English. He is the most painstaking of artists: he may require as many as 40 sittings for a portrait, turns out only about five new canvases a year.

The paintings are not easy to forget. His young girls lounge and stretch themselves, shift uncomfortably as if painfully in doubt about what to do with their newly awakened bodies. What makes them distasteful and at the same time affecting is that the artist himself seems to know exactly the secret of their torment. Balthus' other creatures are equally painful; they share streets and rooms, but they do not speak or even take notice of one another. They fascinate the viewer not by anything they do but simply by what they are--absolutely and agonizingly alone.

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