The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

The artist Sandra McMorris Johnson once told me that, as much as she had always loved Gauguin, she had nevertheless become increasingly uncomfortable looking at his paintings because so many of them depict thirteen-year-old girls in an extremely sexualized way. I think about her discomfort with Gauguin whenever I consider my reaction to Balthus, an artist whose best paintings I find to be utterly beautiful.¹ These paintings are, however, highly, if not obsessively, eroticized portraits of prepubescent girls. It should be noted that Balthus—known to some as the "Lolita painter"—dismissed criticism of his subject matter by declaring an allegiance to formalism.² But, as a pragmatist, I cannot hide behind a strict form/content distinction. Neither can I endorse an opposition between art and life.

My aim, therefore, is to explore the rewards and costs of embracing continuity, or what Peirce called synechism, with specific respect to the making and enjoyment of art.³ I do so even though I am acutely aware of the epistemological benefits of rejecting Peirce's position. (As Arthur Danto reminds us, the predicate "is an artwork"—like "is a dream"—"serves as a shock absorber to the system of beliefs that conservatively defines a world" [1981, 17].) My issue, then, is whether these epistemological benefits transfer to questions of ethical responsibility. That is, if we follow Danto [End Page 22] and regard the act of classifying an object as "art" as entailing its placement into a different ontological category—and, after all, we do not treat Fountain in the same way that we do other urinals—then questions about the ethical value of our appreciations of certain artworks lose much of their urgency.⁴ On the other hand, if we follow Dewey and conceive of art as an intensification of ordinary experience, then we cannot, I believe, avoid addressing the following questions. To what extent should artists be held accountable for the subject matter of their art? To what extent should our unease with this subject matter affect our evaluation of the work? Conversely, to what extent should our initial unease be taken as a reliable guide to our considered evaluation? My focus on Balthus's art, therefore, is chiefly due to how his paintings force us to confront these issues.

I want to be clear. The work that Balthus produced is unequivocally art. It is not pornography, which I will define as imagery produced solely to incite sexual arousal and in which questions of interpretation, aesthetic merit, artistic technique, and art historical context play, at best, a minimal role. Nonetheless, as a feminist who is deeply disturbed by the exploitation of children, I cannot justify my love of these paintings by simply appealing to their unquestioned status as art. Neither can I deny the titillation that they provide to the viewer, even if we can also regard them as indicting glib assumptions of prepubescent asexuality. So, my perplexity becomes personal. Should I be ashamed because The Living Room, http://en.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/Opra/BRUE-7ZABWL, provokes my rapt attention?⁵

Indeed, "rapt attention" might be an understatement. I have thought about this painting ever since I first saw a reproduction of it many years ago in an article in Vanity Fair.⁶ What fascinates me about this piece, I think, is how it manages to be both visually gorgeous and deeply troubling. At first glance, it seems simply a carefully composed and slightly saccharine depiction of youthful ease. Upon closer examination, however—and it is a testament to Balthus's skill as an artist that his paintings always demand a second look—The Living Room is permeated with an undeniable air of menace. The sprawling girl on the couch could as easily be drugged as dreaming; the girl on the floor has assumed an exceedingly awkward position for reading. Of course, the snake in the grass is—as it always is—sexuality. This is evident not only in the possibility that the figures themselves exhibit an awareness of their own changing and developing bodies but, and most importantly, in...