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MARISOL—Stable, 33 East 74th. Marisol's wooden oddballs have been alternately described as folk art, surrealist, Pop, even "poetic dislocations." Actually, these twelve new ones are simply the wackiest, wittiest mélanges on view anywhere. Through March 21.
ROBERT D'ARISTA—Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. In his last painting show, this American University professor of art laid on paint like plaster of paris; for this one, he has tidied up his canvases and thinned his oils to a fine translucence. While he varies his use of texture, D'Arista is constantly concerned with chiaroscuro. His figures cast dark, subtle shadows on a curtain of white or emerge from darkness like apparitions. Through March 7.
BERNARD LORJOU—Hutton, 787 Madison Ave. at 67th. A lively show by a Parisian who has, in a one-man war against abstractionism, engaged in fistfights and lawsuits with his critics and sent his large, figurative paintings floating down the Seine on a barge. In these 28 oils, his colors are as breathtaking as ever, but the bizarre brutality has been transformed into a fierce emotionalism. White and yellow cathedrals blaze against midnight blue, flowers sputter and spout like painted fireworks, and marionettes look out with sad-eyed plaintiveness. Through March 14.
CARROLL CLOAR—Alan. 766 Madison Ave. at 66th. "The hypersensitive stillness at twilight is broken now and then by sounds that ride in from far off." Faulkner? No, Carroll Cloar, writing about what he paints. Faulkner's South is Mississippi, Cloar's Arkansas, but they are much the same: both are remembered through a homely yet sinister realism. Eighteen temperas. Through March 7.
GUITOU KNOOP—Emmerich. 17 East 64th. Balanced like birds poised to fly— and just as graceful—are these 20 polished abstractions in marble, granite and bronze by a Russian-born sculptress who works in Paris. Through Feb. 29.
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC—Wildenstein. 19 East 64th. The hundredth anniversary of his birth is celebrated by this loan exhibition of 50 paintings, including six not seen before in the U.S. and 100 drawings, lithographs and posters. Through March 14.
JENNINGS TOFEL—Zabriskie. 36 East 61st. The first exhibition since the death in 1959 of this protégé of Alfred Stieglitz takes a long look at the last 20 years of his career. During that time Tofel did not change much: he is always expressionist, always crowds his canvases with strange, misshapen humans and animals. His palette brightens, but the symbolism remains cloudy. Through March 7.
HANS HOFMANN—Kootz. 655 Madison Ave. at 60th. He has said he was nobody's student, but Hofmann was practically everybody's teacher. At 83, the dean of abstract expressionism still paints, and each year his shapes get gayer, his colors more delirious. Through March 7.
MIDTOWN
UMBERTO MASTROIANNI—Bonino, 7 West 57th. This major Italian sculptor (an uncle of Movie Actor Marcello Mastroianni) casts planks and lumps of bronze and gives the tortured results such names as Hiroshima, Violenza, Pearl Harbor. Together, they look like a junk heap of civilization from which blooms a brute mess of skulls, limbs and deformities: machine-age fleurs du mal. Through March 12.