The Guitar Lesson
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Guitar Lesson [1] (French: La Leçon de guitare)is a 1934 painting by Balthus. It depicts a sexually explicit lesbian scene featuring a young girl nude from the waist down and her teacher who has one breast exposed. The painting debuted at Gallerie Pierre in Paris in 1934 at Balthus's premiere solo exhibition and even then it was hung in a back room where it was concealed behind a curtain. The exposition was reviewed by Antonin Artaud in "La Nouvelle Revue française" 22, no. 248 of May 1934.
The composition is based on a Pietà, probably the Louvre's mid-15th-century Pieta of Villeneuve-les-Avignons, to judge from the near identical height and comparable sizes of the figures.
The work was lovingly re-interpreted by Japanese photographer Naoto Kawahara in 2007 [2].
External links
- Balthus lessons. (five controversial works by the French artist) by Sabine Rewald
- Image at Wikipedia