Impressionism

Last days of 'Faces of Impressionism' Here's your last chance to be impressed by Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Manet, Cezanne, Degas and other artists represented in the "Faces of Impressionism: Portraits From American Collections" show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st streets. The show ends Sunday. The exhibit, drawn from nearly 30 museum collections, features portraits and figures in landscape settings. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. today and tomorrow and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

You say you don't like your art made of pickled animal parts or icons smeared with elephant dung?Then fuhgeddabout this year's art-world anarchy, the controversial "Sensation" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Instead, hie yourself back a century or so to France, where Manet, Monet and their crew really turned the art world upside down with the first modernist revolution.Today, that revolution comes to the Baltimore Museum of Art in "Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from American Collections," a fascinating homage to the art world's most famous former bad boys (and girls)

The great Impressionist painters fire the imaginations of art lovers like no other group, and the lines extending for blocks outside museums whenever Monet, Renoir, or Cezanne come to town are proof positive of this love affair.While these mid-19th century French artists were redefining the relationship between light and shape, they had an immense impact on their fellow painters on this side of the Atlantic. That is the point of "Sunlight & Shadow: American Impressionism, 1885-1945," an exhibition of 78 works of American Impressionist painters on display at St. John's College's Mitchell Gallery through April 23.The paintings in this exhibit are part of the Lyons Collection from the Fuller Art Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts.

First there was Claude Monet and his art.Then came recognition, exhibitions and fame. Then posters. Coffee mugs. Trivets. Note cards. Tote bags. Refrigerator magnets. Scarves. Mouse pads.Now there is impressionist Barbie.Oh, yes. The effervescent blond with nearly as many careers as outfits is no longer only interested in pink convertibles, shopping and impressing Ken. Her deeper, more contemplative side is showing: Barbie has developed a passion for art.Mattel this year presents the perfect purchase for the art-loving doll collector or the doll-loving art collector: Barbies inspired by masterpieces.

A sign in the lobby at the Art Institute of Chicago coaxes families to become museum members. For $110, those who join get free admission to the museum for two years, access to special events, discounts on gift shop merchandise.Then comes the clincher: Families that join now, the sign says, will receive free tickets to the Renoir exhibition currently on view and free tickets to an exhibition of works by American impressionist Mary Cassatt that won't open for another year.If the museum world were a poker game, then the Art Institute would be holding two aces.

The Phillips Collection in Washington is an assemblage of masterpieces of modern art. It has great paintings by Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, and on and on -- you name the modern master and they most likely have pictures by him, often famous ones. But the most famous of them all is Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" (1880-1881), that icon of impressionism, that glorious picture of a happy group of people gathered to eat, drink and be merry on a sunny afternoon.There are many reasons for its appeal.

1/8 TC Peggy Cyphers, a native of Baltimore and 1977 graduate of Towson State University, has gone on to a career as a painter based in New York. Two of her recent shows have been accompanied by catalogs with essays, and the second of them -- which contains works of the 1980s and 1990s -- is now at Towson on a tour that's taking it from New York to Baltimore to Copenhagen.That's an achievement many artists would envy. And the current show's catalog essay makes bold claims for Cyphers' work: It is related to many things, from early Italian painting and fossils to surrealism, film theory and Paleolithic cave paintings in Sri Lanka, and it's expressive of evolution, time and the humanist tradition.

She was speakingas the car swerved by lit developmentswhere families ate through Jeopardyand yawned through Beverly Hills 90210.''You know, about Gauguin, his colorswere never the same after Martiniqueand Panama with Charles Laval.Still, he had his son, Emile,with him in Paris, the other fourwith his wife in her home, Holland.It was mainly the brush strokesthat Gauguin changed, VanGogh andhe not agreeing right up tothe night Vincent cut off his ear.Yes, Gauguin was there, the twoof them fighting across theArles countryside and absinthesinstead of dinner when theycould afford only one or the other.

* Joan Mitchell, 66, an American painter whose canvases were a synthesis of expressionism and impressionism, died Friday in Paris, where she had lived off-and-on since 1955. The cause was not announced. Some critics thought she reinvented % 5/8 impressionism, adding a touch of American expressionism. Her works were regularly displayed in Paris and New York. In 1989, she received France's prestigious National Grand Prize for Painting.* Ted Thomas, 88, a Broadway and Hollywood producer, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Van Nuys, Calif.

Aside from providing an opportunity to see a lot of lovely pictures, the exhibit of American impressionism now at the Walters Art Gallery leaves two main impressions above all:That American impressionism was different from French impressionism, but not different enough to be really American; and that the collection favors breadth over depth, with the advantages and disadvantages that that implies for an art audience.To take them in reverse order, "Masterworks of American Impressionism from the Pfeil Collection" presents 87 works from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pfeil of Chicago.