This makes “Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a rather strange, even refreshing exercise. It does not march toward the inevitable triumph like most tributes to leading modern artists. It proceeds in fits and starts; many of the paintings are interesting in one way or another but not especially original or even very convincing as totalities. The show is, in some ways, a study in kinds and degrees of failure.
Organized by Sabine Rewald, a Met curator with deep knowledge of Balthus, the exhibition spreads 34 paintings of mostly adolescent girls — 9 of which include cats — through four galleries. All were made between 1935, when Balthus was 27, and 1959, when he was 51 and still had four decades of painting ahead of him.