Chapter One
One must learn to watch for the light; its change of direction, vanishing, and transitions. Start to learn about the light's condition in the morning, after breakfast and reading the mail. This is one way to know if you will paint today, if the progress into the painting's mystery will be intense. Also, if the light in the studio will be good for penetrating inside.
Nothing has changed at Rossinière. It's like a real village. I spent my whole childhood facing these Alps. Facing the mournful brown mass of Beatenberg's fir trees, against the snow's immaculate whiteness.
Basically, we came here because of my nostalgia for the mountains. Rossinière helps me to move forward, to paint.
That's what painting's about. I can almost say without exaggeration, that's all that it's about.
There's a kind of inherent peace here. Everything incites us to be silent: powerful peaks and weighty snow enveloping us in white heaviness; simple,
Chapter One
One must learn to watch for the light; its change of direction, vanishing, and transitions. Start to learn about the light's condition in the morning, after breakfast and reading the mail. This is one way to know if you will paint today, if the progress into the painting's mystery will be intense. Also, if the light in the studio will be good for penetrating inside.
Nothing has changed at Rossinière. It's like a real village. I spent my whole childhood facing these Alps. Facing the mournful brown mass of Beatenberg's fir trees, against the snow's immaculate whiteness.
Basically, we came here because of my nostalgia for the mountains. Rossinière helps me to move forward, to paint.
That's what painting's about. I can almost say without exaggeration, that's all that it's about.
There's a kind of inherent peace here. Everything incites us to be silent: powerful peaks and weighty snow enveloping us in white heaviness; simple, friendly chalets placed on mountain pastures; jingling cowbells; a punctual little railway snaking along the mountainside.
So, let's check the state of the light. The coming day will help the painting advance, the one that has been in progress for so long. Perhaps a single touch of color, after long meditation in front of the canvas. Just that. And the hope of conquering the mystery.
Chapter Two
The studio is a place for work. Indeed, for labor. It's a professional, essential place. I collect myself here, in this place of illumination. I recall Giacometti's studio. Magical, crowded with objects, materials, papers, and the general impression of being close to secrets. I feel much admiration, respect, and affection for Giacometti. He was a brother, a friend. That's why I keep a photograph of him here. I don't know who took it or where it comes from, but this way I work in Alberto's shadow, under his benevolent, meaningful gaze.
Today's painters must be told that everything plays out in the studio, in the fullness of time.
I love the hours spent looking at the canvas, meditating in front of it. Hours which are incomparable in their silence. In wintertime, the heavy stove snores. Familiar studio noises. The pigments mixed by Setsuko, the rubbing of brush on canvas, and everything returns to silence. The secret entry of forms onto the canvas is prepared, with barely sketched-in changes that topple the painting's subject into something vast and unknown. The tutelary image of the peaks appears through the studio's enormous window. From the Montecalvello castle that I own near Viterbo, at the back of the landscape, Monte Cimino can be seen with its pathways through black fir trees, clutched to the mountainside. The same story unfolds both here and there, of power and mystery. Like a world receptive to its own darkness, where I know one must linger in order to attain them.
]Ch2
Chapter Three
One must know how to tame and acclimatize time, to extract meaning from it. Arriving at a possible revelation through the time that is devoted to a canvas. To live in hope of finding it, with that frame of mind and attitude. My work is always done under the influence of spirituality. That's why I expect so much from prayer. It invites you to follow the right way. I am an ardent Catholic. Painting is a means of acceding to God's mystery, of extracting some radiance from His Kingdom, of making it possible to capture a shared light. This is not a vain desire. A humble one, rather. That's why I love Italy. When I first visited it as a young man of fifteen or seventeen, I immediately loved the country for the people's kindness and its tender landscapes. I've always considered Italy an enchanted land. Infused with spirit.
A painting greets our eyes from every window at Montecalvello. A painting is the same thing as a prayer: an innocence that is finally grasped, a moment torn from the disaster of passing time. It is immortality captured.
I have the reputation of taking perhaps a dozen years to complete a painting. I know when it's finished. That is, when it's accomplished. When no further touch or trace of color will happen to correct a world that has finally been attained, a secret space finally perceived. So ends the plentiful prayer offered silently in the studio. So ends the silent contemplation. An idea of beauty has been reached.
Chapter Four
I often insist on the necessity of prayer. To paint as one prays. By doing so, to accede to silence and what is invisible in the world. I am not sure of being followed or understood in this statement, given that a majority of morons make so-called contemporary art, artists who know nothing about painting. But that doesn't matter. Painting has always taken care of itself. In order to reach it even slightly, I'd say it must be ritually seized. To snatch what it can offer as a form of grace. I must employ religious vocabulary as the most apt and closest to what I mean. To join with what is essential in this sacred world through a humble, modest availability that is also presented as an offering.
Painting must always occur in this state of deprivation. Fleeing worldly currents, facilities, and vertigos. My life began in the deepest poverty, with demands I had placed upon myself. I had that sort of will. I recall my solitary days in the rue de Furstenberg studio. I knew Picasso and Braque, and saw them often. They had a great liking for me. For the atypical young man I was, different, bohemian, and savage. Picasso paid me a visit. He told me: "You're the only painter of your generation who interests me. The others try to make Picassos. You never do." The studio was perched high on the sixth floor. You had to want to visit me. It was a strange place, where I lived far from the world, immersed in my own painting.
I think I've always lived that way. In the same existence, and yes, in the apparent bareness of today. I am stretched out on the meridional line, along the chalet's windows that receive the four o'clock sunlight. My eyesight does not always permit me to make out the landscape. The condition of light is enough to satisfy me. This snow-augmented transparency, a dazzling apparition. To retranscribe its passing.
Excerpted from Vanished Splendors by Balthus Copyright © 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers
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