Color, Light and Pattern in Bonnard's Studio "Everything sparkles and the whole painting vibrates."  Bonnard Bonnard's studio wall in his house at Le Cannet displays a series of postcard reproductions of works of art, a few picture postcards, an old creased map of Cannes and a half dozen even older, small sheets of silver paper, some patterned. It would seem that only one visitor, Pierre Courthion, had the sense or the curiosity to ask the painter what "those papers with shimmering colors" were there for. Bonnard's reply was: "It helps me find my sparkles." Alexander Liberman later wrote that "the crumpled, glistening tinfoil was a constant reminder of the master of all art, light. On some of the tinfoil there was a stamped pattern. It seemed to hold light captive. All his life Bonnard was fascinated by pattern." The Artist in His Studio (Viking Press, 1960), p. 18. John Elderfield, wrote that "The high degree of reflectivity of such papers, like that of aquatic arrays, is attributable to the speed of the successive simultaneous contrasts produced by the rapid interchange of light and shade, which effectively reverses the experiences of distinction and separation normally produced by contrasts, causing light and shade or figure and ground to 'assimilate', to seem to shift toward each other as if mixing." See catalogue essay, Bonnard (The Museum of Modern Art, 1998), p. 43. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York