UPTOWN
FAIR LADIES—Slatkin, 115 East 92nd. A dazzling display of the female form: standing, seated or reclining, in the nude or decorously draped, the ladies serve as a universal standard of beauty. Over 65 drawings, paintings and sculptures by Rodin, Degas, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso and others. Through July 15.
CHAIM GROSS—Forum, 1018 Madison Ave. at 78th. Watercolors, 30 here, match the merriment of Gross's sculptures. From patches of clear pale pink and yellow wash, vignettes of circuses, ceremonies and celebrations emerge, sentimental peeps into the past. Through June 13.
WILLIAM WALTON—Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th. A friend of the Kennedys, Walton helped the former First Lady pick paintings for the White House, now chairs the Commission of Fine Arts and serves as adviser for the Kennedy Memorial Library. He still finds time to paint, makes his New York debut with Sun Sequences: dazzling, somewhat dizzying depictions of the months of the year. Through June 19.
EUROPEAN MAINSTREAMS—Lefebre, 47 East 77th. A look at some of the major trends in European art today. Cobra Painters Corneille, Jorn and Alechinsky turn vivid hues and vivacious imaginations into Dutch gardens and smirking faces. Noel, Dahmen and Castel scratch calligraphy in mixed media to achieve image with script. Frenchmen Messagier and Tal-Coät recall nature's misty moods in abstract landscapes. Belgian Pol Bury puts chance to work in moving sculpture. Julius Bissier's refined watercolors and temperas round out the show. Through July 31.
MURIEL KALISH—Staempfli, 47 East 77th. New Yorker Muriel Kalish, 31, is a modern primitive painter, unschooled in art but gifted with a photographic memory. Her colors are happy, her composition curious, her intuition unerring in paintings furnished with wicker chairs, flowered wallpaper, braided rugs and, candid as can be, female nudes and fully dressed males. First showing. Through June 20.
GASTON CHAISSAC—Cordier & Ekstrom, 978 Madison Ave. at 76th. Chaissac is the town cobbler in Vix, France. He writes poetry, has been a friend of Dubuffet for 20 years. His art is marked by eccentricity and a sparkling imagination. With wash and wallpaper he wraps strange figures in startling ambiguity: one picture suggests both the Crucifixion and a scarecrow. In one room eight of his skinny wooden totems stand around and stare from odd, misshapen faces. Through June 30.
A CHOICE OF AMERICANS—Lewison, 50 East 76th. Just the thing for a hot day: Bierstadt's small Washington, D.C. in 1863 showing Conestoga wagons winding along the Potomac, Cole's English Landscape in which couples as well as cows find coolness by a stream, Moro's Beach at Cape Cod, Lawson's impressionistic Landscape in pinks and greens, Ochtman's Mill Pond, Casilear's New Hampshire ravine, an unusual treatment of texture in rocks, moss and wood. Through June 27.
ALBERTO COLLIE—Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. "If Brancusi were alive today he would have released his Bird in Space and freed his Fish to swim," says Venezuelan-born Boston student Alberto