The Metro decided to leave the picture of Balthus in the main exhibition

NEW YORK. The Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to reject the requirements of an online petition calling for the removal from the museum of the erotic work of the Polish-French artist Balthus. The 1938 Thérèse Dreaming painting shows a teenage girl sitting on a chair with her leg raised, in a pose that exposes her underwear. The petition, which received more than 9,000 signatures, claims that the painting "romanticizes the sexuality of the child."

Credit: Balthus | Metropolitan museum of art

No serious exhibition of Balthus, who died in 2001, can resist these issues. Balthus’s works, especially his surrealistic and sexually transgressive paintings, were part of many years of experiments aimed at portraying and studying sexual desire. In the last century, it had countless forms. Sigmund Freud schematized sexual development and built a complex architecture of unconsciousness of sexual desire. Sociologists tried to give rigor to sexual behavior in society. Surrealists used poetry, literature, and visual arts to show the outward manifestations of erotic fantasy. The artistic and intellectual exploration of this frightening new territory had its consequences for the real world.

The author of the petition, a New Yorker named Mia Merrill, said she did not want to censor or destroy the work, it would be enough to provide it with a warning label stating that “some viewers find this piece of art offensive or violate generally accepted moral standards, especially considering the attraction of the artist to young girls. " But even this, the museum staff found it unacceptable. By this standard, the museum may need to establish hundreds, if not thousands, of warning signs, and not just for works done by heterosexual men with an erotic interest in girls.