In an over five-decade career, artist Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) reveled in the ordinary, painting the environs of his everyday life. Never without a sketchbook, the artist was known for his daily walks, often spent hastily scribbling in small pocket agendas. Life itself became the stuff of his paintings, opportunities to riff, to play, to compose. Interspersed among his sketches we also get a glimpse into his dedication to formal concerns. One note reads, “Drawing is feelings. Color is reasoning.” For Bonnard the sketch was but a reaction, while the canvas was a space for a more considered response that was subject to a self-imposed formalist logic. Another note confirms that for Bonnard painting was far more than simple observation; he writes, “One talks about surrendering to nature. There is also such as thing as surrendering to the picture.”
A new exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum, “Bonnard’s Worlds” (November 5th–January 28, 2024), provides a means to examine the places and spaces that Bonnard inhabited and depicted over the course of his life. Presented
