Remembrance of things past | 24 January 2019

An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He had smuggled in a palette, paints and brushes under his coat and was trying to alter one of the exhibits — a picture by Pierre Bonnard. On further questioning, it turned out that the elderly vandal was none other than Bonnard himself. Though the work in question had been ‘finished’ years before, he just couldn’t leave it alone.

Bonnard (1867–1947) was a master of indecision, as a glance at just about any picture in Tate Modern’s new exhibition The Colour of Memory reveals. There are no straight lines or clear divisions in his work. Even items you might expect to be sharp —such as window frames — turn out, on closer inspection, to waver. In Bonnard’s world everything is gently woozy. Fittingly, in self-portraits his face is usually in shadow, indistinct and a little blurred, against the light.