CREATIVE Powers

In this edition, our columnist, DEREK C. BLASBERG, visits the PARIS STUDIO of the inimitable artist SETSUKO KLOSSOWSKA DE ROLA, who was married to one of the most celebrated painters of the 20TH CENTURY and has always approached LIVING her LIFE as if she were CRAFTING a MASTERPIECE

- DEREK C. BLASBERG

The author with Setsuko in her studio at the Astier de Villatte workshop in Paris.

For years, I was too intimidated to talk to Setsuko Klossowska de Rola. Always dressed impeccably in a colorful kimono, with her hair pulled back and red lipstick, she's easy to spot in a crowd. There she is sitting beside Timothée Chalamet at their mutual friend Haider Ackermann's fashion shows and cozying up with the likes of Tilda Swinton and Peter Marino at art openings. The 82-year-old Japanese painter and ceramicist, who splits her time between a spectacular Swiss chalet she shared with her late husband, the legendary French artist Balthus, and a studio in Paris, has always exuded a kind of traditionalism and perfection. The overall effect has rendered me speechless.

I know, I know. Me? Shy? But, yes, it happens occasionally, especially when I'm in the presence of someone with style and substance, which Setsuko has in spades. (She's so well-known among Paris's cultural glitterati that her surname is superfluous.) This woman lived inside the Villa Medici in Rome during the turbulent, freewheeling '70s, breathing the same air as the likes of Fellini and Visconti! I grew up in the pre-digital Midwest, surrounded by cheeseburgers and minivans. Then there is her great reverence for Japanese custom and heritage in the way she dresses, not to mention Balthus's place in the firmament of art history. He became one of the few living artists to have their work exhibited at the Louvre during their lifetime when the museum acquired his 1937 painting The Children-from the estate of Pablo Picasso.

Setsuko's workspace and a pair of kitty teapots.