Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was the last of the Impressionists. It is hard to imagine paintings that are gorgeous. Their sensuousness, vivid color, luminescence, and attention to contrasting textures remind me a lot of Matisse, but without Matisse's tendency toward abstraction. There is a strong temptation to describe Bonnard as MOMA did in 1948 as an artist who only "wished to paint only happy paintings." Yet the latest show is mounted with an eye to portraying him less as a hedonist than somebody who was "obsessive and complex."

Mostly this related to his tendency to rework paintings until he was completely satisfied with the result. The parallel would be Flaubert spending a week in order to write the "perfect sentence." The exhibition brochure says:

"It was quite common for Bonnard to work on a canvas on and off for months at a time, sometimes even years. This method led Picasso to say that he feared dissolving like a bar of soap after seeing one of Bonnard's paintings--for Picasso it was urgent to see a painting completed, while for Bonnard there was always the chance of seeing something anew and therefore of being given access to an endless array of fresh starts. (There are stories, in fact, of his sneaking into museums to touch up his paintings,. Given the chance to alter a work today he would more like to do.)"

Although the show was a delight to the eyes, there was one thing that kept disturbing me. Bonnard painted throughout the 1930s and into the WWII years, but none of the paintings show the slightest awareness that humanity was being plunged into its darkest hours. Mostly there are landscapes, still-lifes and nudes that have a soft and peaceful aura. Did Bonnard decide to stop reading newspapers? This is the only explanation one can have for a body of work that seems totally disconnected with the outside world.

Rodchenko was the polar opposite of Bonnard. He was a leader of the Russian avant-garde that put its skills at the disposal of the Bolshevik revolution. Born in 1891, Rodchenko became prominent in cultural institutions dedicated to promoting the revolutionary cause. In 1919 and 1920 he headed the Museum of Painterly Culture, which helped to shape the approach of the MOMA itself, founded in 1929.

The artistic school that Rodchenko was affiliated with was called Constructivism. In line with a rational and technologically streamlined society, these artists strove for an "objective, impersonal art stripped of description and narrative, and devoid of spiritual or metaphysical trappings" according to the show's brochure.

At a certain point, Rodchenko decided to dump painting altogether. This was announced through his final three monochromatic paintings called "Pure Red Color, Pure Blue Color, and Pure Yellow Color," which appear exactly as the titles indicate. Rodchenko announced, "I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue and yellow. I affirmed: It's all over. Basic colors. Every plane is a plane and there is to be no representation."

As the 20s unfolded, Rodchenko turned to other media, including photography, photocollage, graphic design and sculpture. One of the most interesting productions in this very rich and politically inspired period is a Workers Club from 1925, that the museum has reconstructed. This was a place where workers could socialize, discuss politics and take classes. The austere furniture and posters evoke the Bauhaus School which was evolving in a similar direction at that time in Germany.

Another important initiative was the LEF, or Left Front for the Arts, which was led by Rodchenko, film-maker Sergei Eisenstein and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Key to LEF's aesthetic/political approach was the idea that artistic forms were themselves the vehicles of ideology, and so the creation of a new society required the creation of new forms. "Also central," according to the brochure, was the conviction that revolutionary art required the active participation of the viewer, who would be transformed by the effort of interpreting the work."

One of the more interesting products of the LEF collective was advertising for Soviet companies. Rodchenko and Mayakovsky worked as a team, with the former doing the graphic design and the latter writing the ad copy. There are ads for cigarettes and cookies with slogans to the effect of support the revolution, smoke Soviet cigarettes or eat Soviet cookies.