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Michael Prodger

● IN DECEMBER 2017, TWO MONTHS after the first flurry of sexual abuse allegations were levelled at Harvey Weinstein, the Metropolitan Museum in New York received a petition with more than 8,000 signatories. It requested that the museum remove Thérèse Dreaming, a painting of 1938 by Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, the FrancoPolish artist better known as Balthus (left). The picture (right), which had been hanging in the Met since 1998, portrays a pubescent girl, eyes closed in reverie, with one leg propped up so that her skirt and slip fall back exposing her underwear and Mia Merrill, the originator of the petition, wrote that: “it can be strongly argued that this painting romanticises the sexualisation of a child” and that “the Met is, perhaps unintentionally, supporting voyeurism and the objectification…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2023

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