UPPER MADISON AVENUE

KURT SCHWITTERS--Chalette, 1100 Madison Ave. at 82nd St. Schwitters dabbled in Dada before embracing an equally nutty style that he labeled Merz. This retrospective of his Merz-drenched collages suggests that yesterday's Dada is today's Pop. Through Nov. 30.

REX CLAWSON--Royal-Athena II, 1066 Madison Ave. at 80th St. Clawson mixes nerve with verve in wax-oil-and-casein commentaries on politics, crime, Mom and libido. Not a fig leaf in the show. Through Nov. 9.

AINSLIE BURKE--Kraushaar, 1055 Madison Ave. at 80th St. Eighteen tranquil landscapes--New England's surf, dunes, marshes and headlands--that are well-mannered but far from banal. Through Nov. 9.

ART OF TUSCANY--Duveen, 18 East 79th St. A sumptuous show including a Fra Angelico Madonna and Child and a Masolino Annunciation that have never been shown in the U.S. Also works by Giotto, Botticelli, Delia Robbia, Francesco di Giorgio. All but the Giottos are for sale. Through Dec. 31.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI--Perls, 1016 Madison Ave. at 78th St. Twenty-two paintings and two pieces of sculpture. Among the oval-faced, almond-eyed portraits are two of British Poetess Beatrice Hastings. One painting, Le Garc,on Rouge, has never been shown in New York before. Through Dec. 7.

RONALD SEARLE--Bianchini, 16 East 78th St. Searle has sharpened his pen for a vorpal bit of vivisection; the victims of his Anatomies and Decapitations in ink-and-wash--flatulent beldames with clinker eyes, lopsided popsies with liquid-cherry smiles--belong under glass in St. Trinian's biology lab. Through Nov. 11.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG--Castelli, 4 East 77th St. Newest turn in the Pop cycle is the technique of enlarging colored photographs and transferring them to canvas by a silk-screen color separation process. Rauschenberg laces it all together with splotches of paint; the result is something like a battered billboard. Through Nov. 21.

ALFONSO OSSORIO--Cordier & Ekstrom, 978 Madison Ave. at 76th St. Twenty-nine panels on which seashells, fake pearls, links of rusty chain, hunks of bone (with glass eyes staring from the marrow), shards of mirrors, jaw teeth, driftwood and other flotsam have become mired in puddles of plastic glue. Gaudy, repetitious and faintly emetic. Through Nov. 9.

ALBERT BIERSTADT--Florence Lewison, 50 East 76th St. These 24 paintings by a master of mammoth landscapes come as a surprise. Not only are they small (the largest is only 11 1/2 in. by 15 3/8 in.), but their simplicity makes them almost abstract despite being 100 years old. Through Nov. 30.

HIRAM WILLIAMS--Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th St. Williams' people are dough-faced cyclopes, chuckling dwarfs, malevolent freaks, some of them impeccably dressed in J. Press suits, all unkind to mankind. Through Nov. 9.

ANTONI TAPIES--Martha Jackson, 32 East 69th St. Lumpy canvases filled with shapes hacked and gouged out of rubberized marble dust have a grim sobriety that evokes the sun-parched Catalan world the artist lives in. Through Nov. 16.

AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE--Dintenfass, 18 East 67th St. Painting a pear excited Cezanne; in this show 38 modern artists respond to the old-fashioned challenge offered by still life. Jack Levine, Philip Evergood, Sidney Goodman, Andrew Wyeth, Loren Maclver, David Aronson are among the entries. Through Nov. 9.

ANTOINE-LOUIS BARYE--Alan Gallery, 766 Madison Ave. at 66th St. The minuscule bronzes of the 19th century French sculptor of animals. Through Nov. 16.

MINO MACCARI--Gallery 63, 721 Madison Ave. at 63rd St. The first U.S. one-man show by an Italian painter-etcher. Viewers will be reminded of Grosz, Daumier and Goya with their stingers removed: Maccari is a sympathetic satirist. Through Nov. 9.

GEORGE PICKEN--Rehn Gallery, 36 East 61st St. Picken teaches painting at Columbia University. His work is vehemently abstract, but an absent-minded memory of nature sometimes sneaks in. Through Nov. 16.

RAYMOND PARKER--Kootz, 655 Madison Ave. at 60th St. A thunderhead of hard-edged clouds in shocking colors, Parker's shapes-in-space seem waiting to collide, never quite make a satisfactory bump. Through Nov. 9.

EDWARD LANING--Griffin, 611 Madison Ave. at 58th St. Forty-six paintings and drawings, mostly Italian in theme, open this new gallery. Included is an oil called Sanctuario, a spooky look at a Neapolitan side-street shrine. Through Nov. 11.

MID-MANHATTAN

MAURICE FREEDMAN--Midtown, 11 East 57th St. Twenty-five landscapes and still lifes in oil and gouache. Freedman's brush is bold, and so is his color. Through Nov. 23.

ANDRE DERAIN--Hutton, 41 East 57th St. Forty-four bronzes by a painter who sculpted for fun. Also at Hutton: a groupt of German expressionist painters, including Gabriele Muenter, Ernst Kirchner, Alexej von Jawlensky. Through Nov. 16.

HUGO WEBER--Howard Wise, 50 West 57th St. Last year's show by the Swiss-born abstractionist had a rivers-of-the-world motif. Now Weber has turned to love; his titles contain the word over and over. The paintings could just as easily be about indigestion. Through Nov. 9.

THE BETTMANN PANOPTICON--The Bettmann Archive, 136 East 57th St. Visual fun-and-games played by commercial artists collaging or assemblaging old graphics and other curiosities from Bettmann's collection. The results, ranging from Pop-art foolishness to fine-art finesse, are often impressive. Through Nov. 22.

THE SCULPTORS GUILD--Lever House, Park Ave. at 53rd St. Sixty-six samples of U.S. sculpture in a variety of materials; charred fir, laminated marble, aluminum epoxy, sassafras root, sheet copper, concrete and stained glass are a few. De Creeft, Epping, Gross, Nevelson, Zorach are among the sculptors. Through Nov. 24.

E. E. CUMMINGS--Downtown Gallery, 32 East 51st St. The poet and typographical eccentric was also a painter, but the influences of Van Gogh, Picasso and Kandinsky on the 40-odd paintings in this show suggest that Cummings put his most original ideas into print. Also at Downtown, some paintings by Ben Shahn done as set designs for Cummings' play HIM. Through Nov. 16.

MILTON AVERY--Associated American Artists, 605 Fifth Ave. at 49th St. First showing of the innocent etchings and woodcuts of an artist usually identified as a painter. Through Nov. 9. More Avery is on view at Grace Borgenicht Gallery, 1018 Madison Ave. at 79th St.--16 paintings, deceptively simple, cautiously colored, mostly agreeable. Through Nov. 23.

MUSEUMS

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th St. More than 60 oils by Francis Bacon, the myopic English master of howling, human agony. Yammering popes, chittering baboons, keening sides of beef hang alongside the terrifying visceral Three Studies for a Crucifixion. Through Jan. 12.

METROPOLITAN--Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. Most of its galleries are closed for air-conditioning installation, so the Met is playing it cool with a long-term exhibition of Faberge bric-a-brac. The jeweled Easter eggs, precious parasol handles and assorted semiprecious whatnots would look more at home in Tiffany's down the street. Also on view: the Met's permanent collection of European and U.S. paintings.

FINCH COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART--62 East 78th St. Forty Venetian paintings of the 16th century, including works by Titian, Tintoretto, Bassano and Veronese. Among the Titians: a frieze painted between 1560 and 1569 to decorate his own home. Through Dec. 15.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART--11 West 53rd St. Forty canvases, dating from 1940 to 1963, by Hans Hofmann, the panjandrum of abstract expressionists. Through Dec. 1. Also at the Modern Museum: Soft-focus sculpture of the rebel Italian, Medardo Rosso, who worked in wax and accused Rodin of snitching his ideas. In rejecting the notion that sculpture is petrified people, Rosso often gave his glowing waxworks a life that has outlived the subjects. Through Nov. 23.

MUSEUM OF PRIMITIVE ART--15 West 54th St. More than 50 examples of sculpture of primitive peoples, including the figure of a 6th century Mayan priest, one of the few examples of Mayan wood carving to have survived termites and jungle rot. Through Nov. 10.

WHITNEY--22 West 54th St. The first retrospective show since Futurist Joseph Stella's death in 1946 fills two floors with his paintings, collages and drawings. Among 100 works is his most ambitious, New York Interpreted, a five-canvas panorama that glows with dark lapidary lights. Through Dec. 4. Complementing the retrospective, a show at Schoelkopf Gallery, 825 Madison Ave. at 69th St., offers paintings, gouaches, drawings and collages from all periods of Stella's career. Through Nov. 16.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM--Eastern Parkway. Asian art on loan from Collector Ernest Erickson, including Islamic ceramics, Indian miniatures, Nepalese, Thai and Cambodian sculpture, two pages from an 11th century Buddhist palm-leaf manuscript. Through Jan. 12.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.