The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard

Vuillard's small canvases of the 1890s--room interiors, scenes of family gatherings or women sewing, self-portraits--are the paintings for which he is justly most famous. They are the subject of a wonderful traveling exhibition curated by Easton of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. In this highly readable, superbly illustrated monograph, which accompanies the exhibit, the author lets us look at Vuillard's complex pictorial oeuvre in a number of complementary ways--as claustrophobic glimpses of Parisian bourgeois life, as metaphors of the artist's private self, as decorative triumphs or as family psychodramas. A founder of the Nabi group, an offshoot of symbolism, Vuillard immortalized his mother's home-based corset business in enigmatic images of self-absorbed seamstresses. His room interiors radiate mystery and Easton elucidates their emotional power without overanalysis or reductionist readings. (Nov.)