Bonnard at the Legion of Honor

In Bonnard's paintings you can see the world becoming modern and resisting change at the same time. He made interior and exterior art; his paintings come as close to expressing the life inside our lives and the life outside our lives as is possible.

No matter how large the human figure may be in a painting by Bonnard, the human figure is always subsumed by the physical space surrounding it. Even the look on the faces in the portraits Bonnard painted look lost in space, not unpleasantly, not as if they're being tortured, but as if they're more than aware of the ineffable situation they find themselves in and have no other choice other than to be quiet enough to be who they are.

One of Bonnard's models said that he asked her not to pose but to move around. I take this to mean that he wanted to know something of the whole life he was painting, and not just its appearance. The model said that his brushstrokes were like heartbeats, that he was mostly silent when he painted, and that when he spoke he spoke in poems.