LA CIENEGA AREA

Pierre Bonnard could be described as the David Hockney of his day. Born in 1876, Bonnard was a full-service artist who illustrated books, designed posters and theater sets, created a stained glass window for Tiffany, and even made puppets. Essentially a colorist with a deep feeling for the sensuous qualities of paint, Bonnard had a flair for expressive decorative painting, and he played a central role in its revival in the early 1900s.

Bonnard is primarily known for poetic depictions of domestic interiors and the Paris milieu--two themes that dominate this exhibition of 27 works dating from 1894--1946. Composed of drawings, pastels, watercolors and gouaches, the show exudes the hushed gentility of an afternoon tea; we see shaded country lanes, fashionable ladies of leisure strolling the boulevard or lounging with their cats, still life studies of fruit and flowers, and in a small oil portrait, a refined French damsel “of a certain age” who’s as delicately boned as CoCo Chanel.

One comes away with an impression of Bonnard as an extremely sentimental, somewhat provincial man; to look at this work, you’d never guess he was actually something of a rebel who defied his family in becoming an artist, refused the French Legion d’Honneur and experienced fits of independent thinking throughout his long career. One of the first artists to become involved with poster design, the young Bonnard was part of a forward-thinking group known as the Nabis (the Hebrew word for prophet) early in his career, and was an ardent admirer of Japanese woodcuts and Art Nouveau (not the politically correct thing to love at that point). Bonnard’s interest in things Oriental is apparent in his work, which interweaves color and the calligraphic line without showing a seam. (Mekler Gallery, 651 N. La Cienega Blvd., to April 18.)