By 1900 Bonnard had turned to a looser, somewhat Impressionist style of painting for its vivid naturalism. His subject matter had mainly become snatched moments of perception --stopped moments of time. But he came to worry that Impressionism offered too fleeting a view of the world. He did not want to show that appearances were transitory but, rather, to arrest the transitory moment. He wanted to convey what it is like to come upon something unexpectedly for the first time. This required compositional and coloristic innovations that would surprise the viewer by making everyday objects seem strange: oddly shaped, of uncertain texture or incredible color, hard to decipher, hidden in unlikely corners or reflected in mirrors, spatially dislocated, and so on. In the 1920s, Bonnard formed the geography of his uncertain world. Virtually every painting makes us puzzle over it. Bonnard, having stopped a moment of time, asks for our participation in unpacking the complexity of detail to be found there. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York