Where does he fit within your pantheon? His art is very high in my pantheon of the not-what-it-seems, which is itself very high in my larger pantheon. For curators and critics who work in contemporary art, their mandate, I think, is to make unfamiliar things familiar. One reason I do like to work in the early part of the century is that I think my mandate is to make familiar things unfamiliar, so that you can recapture some of the surprise they had when they were new. I do realize that a lot of people may not know Bonnard's work well, so I do actually have to make it first familiar, then unfamiliar. And I think it is crucial to acknowledge that the great paintings made in the early part of this century are still mysterious things, and that part of our job is to make sure their mysteriousness continues to be acknowledged. That is what will keep them alive in the present - by teasing out just how complex and unsettling they are. Not every painting by Bonnard offers that possibility. But a lot do, and many are in the exhibition. It will show, I am convinced, that there's a real gap, as there used to be with Matisse, between the popular image of the artist and the actual experience of the work. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York