ABSTRACT
There is a temptation to succumb to the paradise of sensation that is so abundant in Pierre Bonnard without ever bothering to consider what it is that makes his art at once so appealing and so strong. Bonnard is condemned as "just another neo-Impressionist, a decadent; the end of an old idea, not the beginning of a new one." And then, in summing up his aversion to everything Bonnard represents, P. Picasso isolates very precisely the special strength and originality to be found in this artist. Bonnard was flawless in his control of the selection as well as the accretion of detail in his work. In Bonnard, as in much of the greatest French art, the hedonist lives on easy terms with the analytical intelligence. It is a synthesis of mind and emotion no other art has yet equaled—or displaced.
