This short story is included in the collection “Alive in Shape and Color – 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired” by Lawrence Block. This specific story is based on the painting by Balthus “Les beaux jours” (1946), a child reclining on a meridian sofa, legs spread open, right breast visible. A weird story of a girl who sees this painting in a museum and then is at the same time the girl in the picture, posing for Balthus in the “Grand Chalet” in Switzerland. A kind of four-dimensional narrative. I went to look back at Balthus’s paintings. I never liked his work, but the numerous canvases with these very young girls in suggestive poses made me cringe, and the plot of this short story contributed to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Master tugs at my tight-fitting sleeve, pulling it off my shoulder to expose my right breast that is small and hard as an unripened apple. The skirt of this (tight) dress which I have been given to wear is very short, and falls back to reveal much of my legs. In other paintings, in other rooms, the stark white of my little-girl panties is revealed as Master has positioned my legs, spread my legs just so.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This short story is included in the collection “Alive in Shape and Color – 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired” by Lawrence Block. This specific story is based on the painting by Balthus “Les beaux jours” (1946), a child reclining on a meridian sofa, legs spread open, right breast visible. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[81],"tags":[42,44,71],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-childhood","tag-hopelessness","tag-horror"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/les-beaux-jours.jpg?fit=1024%2C758&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2855,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions\/2855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}