Mieke Bal's analysis is focused in the eerie sense of very real and very unreal that the paintings emanate. She considers this the heart of Balthus's work. Bal argues that the paintings draw
the viewer into a world we know not to exist. This canny fictionality makes allegations of erotic appropriation naive and censoring. Reducing Balthus's work to the paintings of nude adolescent
girls is, moreover, ignoring his many works that are not in the least focused on this theme. Color, space, genres or history are some of the key concepts that the author put in the center of
Balthus's work.
