Bonnard and Escapism
April 14, 2026
Violently, but also with his intellect. Still life artists in the same great easel painting tradition—Chardin, Cezanne—had pondered what kinds of logic related appearances to objects. Chardin’s glazes and impastos and Cezanne’s so-called passages were in a sense structured answers to those enquiries. Bonnard, as an artist who remained a dedicated reader of Mallarmé, seems to have become skeptical that there was any structured answer at all. The more that he thinks, the more he aims to un-know.