Bonnard: The Experience of Seeing

Rarely seen and important paintings by this much-loved French postimpressionist, emphasizing his radical use of color and unconventional compositions. 

A new monograph brings together 30 important paintings by Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) on loan from museums and private collections, including still lifes, nudes, interior scenes, and landscapes, many never seen together before and published here for the first time. The book reveals how Bonnard’s modern compositions transformed paintings in the first half of the twentieth century, while celebrating his unpar-alleled ability to capture fleeting moments, memories, and emotions on canvas. Rather than focus on a particular time period or subject, Bonnard: The Experience of Seeing aims to present Bonnard’s modernity and concentrate on his influence on contemporary painters working today. The book draws attention to how Bonnard translated the experience of perception—with his shifting spaces, camouflaged and dissolving figures going in and out of focus, and forms hidden at the periphery — and how we as viewers experience his paintings, with his works slowly revealing themselves to us over time. 

About the Author:

Barry Schwabsky is art critic for The Nation and coeditor of international reviews for Artforum. Sarah Whitfield is an art historian, writer, and curator. She is coauthor of the René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné.