VAN GOGH & EXPRESSIONISM
Neue Galerie

Walking into this glorious, highkey-colored exhibit is like entering a party in full swing: The atmosphere is heady; the conversations, a combination of shouts, murmurs, and belted-out song, are amicable and a joy to listen to. Such is the inexplicable magic of a show centered on the influence of a painter so gifted, his work so groundbreaking, that his art demanded an immediate and emotional response in the studios of other artists.

Lance Esplund (March 22)

Until July 2 (1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th Street, 212-628-6200).

PICASSO, BRAQUE AND EARLY FILM IN CUBISM
PaceWildenstein

Like Cubism itself, PaceWildenstein’s “Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism” is dense, a bit startling, totally audacious — and possibly seminal. The exhibition, which borrows major works from museums around the world and places them in the company of early film projections and filmmaking paraphernalia, has a theory about Cubism that seems to have been almost entirely overlooked, but which makes sense: that cinematography was a major impetus of this revolutionary style. In more than one sense of the word, this is a challenging show.

David Cohen (May 3)

Until June 23 (32 E. 57th St. at Madison Avenue, 212-421-3292).

AWAKENINGS: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan
Japan Society

Zen Buddhism maintains a robust tradition of figure painting, a tradition magnificently celebrated by “Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan,” a new exhibition at the Japan Society. The show comprises 47 Japanese (Zen) and Chinese (Chan) scroll paintings and painted sliding doors, including some work that has never before left Japan. Scroll paintings of the Zen pantheon — the Buddha Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha), certain bodhisattvas, Bodhidharma (the First Patriarch), and others — were key tools for transmitting and enacting the religion as it spread east. This show provides informative bold strokes to follow, and then fills them in with gorgeous detail. Like the peripatetic Buddhist saints, these works have traveled widely to convey the dharma. You will delight in awakening to it.

Daniel Kunitz (April 5)

Until June 17 (333 E. 47th St., between First and Second avenues, 212-832-1155).

GEORGES ROUAULT: JUDGES, CLOWNS & WHORES
Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Mitchell-Innes & Nash has brought together a stunning grouping of 26 of Rouault’s paintings — judges, clowns, and whores, as well as a few land- and seascapes — pictures that merge ancient Egyptian Fayum portraiture, medieval spirituality, and 20th-century Expressionism. The results are cartoonish pictures that are deeply emotional and brutally honest. The exhibit is remarkable in that, for the first time in America since the 1953 retrospective at MoMA, a major grouping of Rouault’s paintings has been brought together in one space. This allows for us to see the artist’s remarkable range and variousness of touch.

L.E. (May 10)

Until June 9 (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 1018 Madison Ave. at 78th Street, 212-744-7400).

MAGICAL MEANS: Milton Avery & Watercolor
Knoedler & Company

These watercolors’ subjects are the still lifes, interiors, and landscapes familiar from Avery’s oil paintings, and they reflect the same trend toward increasing abstraction. With its elementary composition of gamboling shapes and colors, “Little House by Purple Sea” (1958), produced when the artist was in his 70s, is classic Avery. At once fanciful and resolute, it locates the essential aspects of a scene — a house perched on a shore, spreading water, a crowding background — with an elementary scheme of purples, blues, and greens. Some of the later watercolors, animated by scratchy textures rather than a counterpoint of tones, seem more tentative in design, but even these resonate with the artist’s appealing blend of obtuseness and grace.

John Goodrich (May 17)

Until August 10 (19 E. 70th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues, 212-794-0550).