Description

Balthus's Ashtray

"In the winter of 2009 I entered the studio of the painter Balthus to make an inventory of the contents of the space. The studio remains untouched since his death in 2001 and it seemed as though he was still there. The objects take on an otherworldly aura in the pale northern light falling obliquely through the window. Amongst the array of objects there is a large ceramic ashtray containing the last eight cigarettes smoked by Balthus. It is such a strange and intimate thing to look at, simultaneously full of life and death. I held the scanner upside down over the ashtray and held my breath in order not to move and I was reminded of the breath which had once inhaled and exhaled the smoke of the cigarettes below."
This is how Katerina Jebb describes the genesis of the image that has been used to conceive the Balthus’s Ashtray.

Published in 100 copies, it is an exact ceramic replica of the original ashtray on which Katerina Jebb’s scanograph is applied.

This edition is a collaboration between Katerina Jebb, L'Atelier de Balthus, We Do Not Work Alone and Fondation Beyeler.