Pierre Bonnard | The Experience of Seeing at Acquavella

This loan exhibition from museums and private collections, featuring over twenty paintings by the modernist French artist Pierre Bonnard, reasserts the artist’s influence as a pioneering modernist painter whose style transcended the conventional narrative of modern art. The exhibition highlights his innovative use of incandescent color, open-ended forms, and unconventional compositions.

Across works from different moments in time and varied subjects, the exhibition explores how Bonnard translated the experience of optical perception with several tactics, such as shifting spaces, camouflaged and dissolving figures moving in and out of focus, and glimpsed forms hidden at the periphery. 

Often overlooked and described as a late impressionist painter, Bonnard pursued his own path as a painter, and his unique techniques and remarkable range of innovations continue to provide inspiration to many artists working today. As stated by art historian and critic Barry Schwabsky in a catalogue essay on the exhibition, it is “Bonnard’s unwillingness to fix himself or his viewers in place that attracts so many artists to his way of working.” 

Beginning with Bonnard’s influence on color field painters such as Mark Rothko through the lyrical abstractionists of the following generation, Bonnard’s diverse influence extends to a broad and unexpected range of artists working today, including Alex Katz, John Armleder, Lois Dodd, Miquel Barcelo, Howard Hodgkin, Peter Doig, Andrew Cranston, Hayley Barker, Whitney Bedford, and Allison Katz.

Through May 26 at Aquavella Gallery, 18 East 79^th Street, New York, NY Info  

Continuing: Paul Resika | Recent Paintings at Bookstein

The first part of the exhibition will feature paintings from the artist’s two latest series: End of Day and Free and Easy. In the End of Day series, a blazing sun, stripped down to its essential spherical shape, is shown moments before its sets on the low horizon line of the ocean beneath it. Both sky and sun vary in fiery shades of oranges and yellows. The Free and Easy series, by contrast, is vertical in its composition and depicts the bright white moon instead of the sun.  A stirring water, executed in quick brushstrokes, articulates the bottom edge of the composition. The second part of the exhibition will run from May 17 – June 9, 2023. It will feature two monumental square paintings – Cerulean and Tangelo – each measuring 76 x 76 inches and depicting vast triangles that resemble sails.

An opening reception for Part II of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, May 17th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. 

Bookstein Projects, 60 East 66^th Street, New York, NY Info

Closing April 29: Gerhard Richter | New and recent work at David Zwirner

The exhibition presents a group of Richter’s last paintings, made in 2016–2017. Though Richter completed his last paintings in 2017, his dynamic practice continues his artistic inquiries into the possibilities of abstraction and perception through his ongoing experimentation with drawing, printing and sculpture. 

Richter has produced a new glass installation that continues his exploration of the human perspective and the built environment. An expansive suite of new works on paper from 2021–2022—some made with ink and others with graphite and colored pencil—are also on view, as well as works related to the artist’s mood series of colored ink sketches. As Dieter Schwarz notes, Richter’s new work “has transformed into the celebration of the visible and this celebration is driving new chapters in [his] indefatigable creativity.”

A series of podcasts includes a special live episode on Gerhard Richter, featuring the art historian Benjamin Buchloh inside the acclaimed exhibition, on view in New York through April 29. Listen now

David Zwirner, 537 West 20^th Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, April 26, 6pm: Finding Your Voice at SVA Theatre

MFA Computer Arts presents the latest installment of Chair Terrence Masson’s Finding Your Voice discussion series, featuring Scott Ross, founder of Digital Domain, former senior vice president of LucasArts Entertainment, and CEO of Virtuosity, a startup that offers VR solutions to major brands and studios. Fre and open to the public. 

SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, April 26, 6:30pm EST: Jacolby Satterwhite at Cooper Union and online

The Public Art Fund presents an artist talk with Jacolby Satterwhite as he delves into the multilayered process of creating An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time (2022), his site-specific film merging the past, present, and future of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the New York Philharmonic. Satterwhite will discuss how community engagement and public projects fit within his artistic practice. He will also dive into his unique approach to creating dreamlike digital animations that synthesize performance, illustration, and painting. 

Conceived for the 50-foot Hauser Media Wall in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, this work playfully weaves archival images, live-action footage, and experimental digital animation. The film’s cast represents artists since the Philharmonic’s founding in 1842 and showcases more than one hundred music and dance students from local schools, including The Ailey School, The Juilliard School, and Professional Performing Arts School. Set against a colorful and highly detailed landscape inspired by New York City’s built environment, the film offers a more inclusive view of the history of Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic while envisioning a creative future that reflects the diversity of the city.  Registration is required.

The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square (on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets) 

Friday, May 5: The Morgan Library & Museum Garden Reopens

Visitors to the Morgan are able to enjoy the Garden with museum admission every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, through October 29, 2023. The Garden will also remain open during Free Friday Nights from 5-7pm every Friday evening.  

Developed by award-winning landscape designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, the Morgan Garden includes periwinkle beds flanking the Library’s loggia and colorful, low-height herbaceous beds. A generous grass lawn sweeps out from the modern pavilion next to the Library, bordering the latter and the Annex. Bluestone pathways are laid in patterns derived from the Library’s Renaissance-inspired floors, and cobbled stonework adds visual and textural interest. The garden also displays several antiquities from the Morgan’s collection that have previously been inaccessible to the public. Take a virtual tour here
Morgan Library & Museum, xxx Madison Avenue, New York, NY Info