UPTOWN

ALBERT BLOCH--Goethe House, 1014 Fifth Ave. at 82nd. The only American to exhibit with German expressionism's Blaue Reiter group, Bloch returned to the U.S. in 1921, quietly settled down to teaching at the University of Kansas, where he died two years ago. Bloch's first New York exhibition in 37 years, which includes some of the Blaue Reiter works, reveals that the early, brooding Weltschmerz never left him. Alone and away from movements, however, he fashioned it into an individual theme. In paintings bathed with spectral moonlight, figures of darkness grope blindly through a lonely world, and harlequins act out a private grief in the eternal presence of death. Through Jan. 6.

ROBERT BUeCKER--Feigen-Herbert, 24 East 81st. Hard-edged icons by a 28-year-old New Yorker: polyptychs of oil on wood are marked with only an occasional economical line to suggest Romanesque pillars and arches. Buecker is delicate, antique, and trim enough a craftsman to be a builder of clavichords, also on view. Through Jan. 11.

COLETTE BANGERT--Krasner, 1061 Madison Ave. at 80th. Watercolors employing the touch of the pointillists and the spectrum of the impressionists limit themselves to the exploration of hidden lights. A warm incandescence radiates from flecks of contrasting opaque pigment veneered over squiggles like Hebrew calligraphy. First New York showing. Through Jan. 4.

BRUNO LUCCHESI--Forum, 1018 Madison Ave. at 79th. The new bronzes of this Italian-born New Yorker, a 1962 Guggenheim fellow, sparkle with candid spontaneity: washerwomen gossip over wet rags, a child quivers on stilts, a peasant Girl Tying Apron seems to be doing the twist. What continually threatens Lucchesi's suspended animations is a manneristic overdose of whimsy. Through Jan. 11.

FAY LANSNER--Kornblee, 58 East 79th. Though she considers her pastels mere preludes to the large oils so fashionable today, the artist is plainly a master, through her own swift stroke, of the chalky medium. When her female figures are multiplied in oils and blown up into 10-ft. canvases, they are stripped of intimacy, become stiff and frigid strangers lost in a roomful of mirrors. Through Jan. 4.

LORETTA HOWARD--Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th. Passing from this traditional painter's deeply-hued, sonorous still lifes and oil portraits to the fresh air of her watercolored landscapes is like stepping from a musty drawing room into a brightly blowing summer's day. Through Jan. 4.

IAN WOODNER--Contemporaries, 992 Madison Ave. at 77th. A profusion of still lifes--cornflowers, roses, mums, larkspur --bloom from dainty Rorschach applications of watercolors by the builder-architect who designed the Central Park Zoo. Through Jan. 4.

EMILE GILIOLI and MICHEL ELIA--World House, 987 Madison Ave. at 77th. Fifty sculptures by two Parisians. The polished-bronze abstracts of Gilioli, formerly a blacksmith, are forged with a purity of line that is matched by Elia's virginal Arp-like marbles, which more immediately echo the human figure. Through Jan. 25.

JOHNNY FRIEDLAENDER--Lefebre, 47 East 77th. In marked similarity to his etchings, 15 of which are included in this show, the watercolors of one of Europe's best-known graphic artists are exquisite linear abstractions. Friedlaender's soft-focus shadings on old parchment, brightened by occasional glimmers of red and blue, reveal a fancy and poesy akin to Klee. Through Jan. 4.

FRITZ KOENIG--Staempfli, 47 East 77th. A host of entities merge in cast bronzes by West Germany's foremost sculptor. From such subjects as an ancient quadriga, Manhattan and a man in a landscape, he fashions a miracle of the union of one life with another. Through Jan. 11.

19TH CENTURY HOLIDAY--Lewison, 50 East 76th. Select representational paintings by 18 lesser-known artists of the past, mostly Americans. Included are J. F. Cropsey's The Old Mill, J. W. Casilear's In the Wood, Bierstadt's Italian Peasant and August Franzen's Mother and Child. Through Jan. 4.

EDVARD MUNCH--Granville, 929 Madison Ave. at 74th. Nothing is innocent in these demonic graphics from the private hell of Norway's greatest artist. Simian males are seduced by redheaded vampires in an orgy of richly colored woodcuts and aquarelle lithographs, betraying Munch's mixture of lust and hate for woman.

Through Jan. 4.

DAVID BERGER--Cober, 14 East 69th. From a sky of lurid pink springs a flurry of flying hoofs, rippling manes and neighing horses on a clamorous carrousel. Their youthful riders are singularly expressionless; it is hardly a merry merry-go-round. Yet Berger's children of enchained emotions project their fancy into a world of living color, an incarnation of their wildest dreams. Through Jan. 11.

BOB THOMPSON--Jackson, 32 East 69th. Feverishly sensual imagery of unsubtle sexual allegory spiced by a confusion of horses' rumps, human hinders, bat-winged vampires and amoebic shapes that droop and contort like tortured Shmoos. The hot, flat fuchsias, reds and greens of this young modern primitive tangle in a fluid phantasmagoria of form, motion and space. Through Jan. 4.

EUGENE HIGGINS--Braverman, 23 East 67th. Oils, watercolors, drawings and etchings by a minor U.S. romantic (1874-1958). Like his artistic forerunner, France's Jean Francois Millet, whom he admired and imitated, Higgins painted somber configurations of the lowly--peasants, tramps, and refugees. Through Jan. 4.

YVES BRAYER--Wildenstein, 19 East 64th. Sixty-six oils, watercolors and drawings reflect the dizzying, dazzling light that never seems to set over the gaunt landscapes of the Mediterranean. First U.S. exhibition by this French traditionalist. Through Jan. 11.

WOOD GAYLOR--Zabriskie, 36 East 61st. This city primitive, who died in 1957, was privy to the artistic life of an era from the Armory Show through the Beaux Arts balls of the '20s to the Union Square Fire Brigade Party (1930) in honor of Brancusi. He captured it all with studied naivete, gleaming wit and private jokes. Through Jan. 4.

DAVID GILBOA--Theodor Herzl Institute, 515 Park Ave. at 60th. A Hungarian who migrated to the Holy Land 30 years ago, Gilboa settled in the artists' colony at Safad and became one of Israel's popular painters. The oils in his first U.S. exhibition are technically amateurish, but his watercolors adroitly convey an obvious affection for ancient alleyways, sun-parched marketplaces, and the Galilean countryside. Through Jan. 10.

MIDTOWN

TOYS BY ARTISTS--Parsons, 24 West 57th. A grab bag from Santa's other helpers: a black-coiffed, sad-eyed Marisol Doll by Marisol; a block-toy chess set by George Ortman; William King's Pop guns; Lanny Powers' alphabet blocks, in which M stands for Marilyn Monroe. Among the playful creative elves: Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Richard Lindner, Richard Anuszkiewicz. Through Jan. 4.

LOVIS CORINTH--Frumkin, 32 East 57th. Sixty self-portraits by the late-blooming German impressionist (1858-1925) offer an authentic study in character. Paintings, prints, drawings and watercolors, ranging from the belabored early works of the artist's 20s to the violent chiaroscuro, powerful brush stroke and emotional fervor of his later years. Through Jan. 4.

MUSEUMS

JEWISH MUSEUM--Fifth Ave. at 92nd. Color blindness is no problem here: 20 U.S. artists show 39 astringent black-and-white paintings plucked from the usually hot palettes of such painters as Albers, Hofmann, Pollock, Motherwell and De Kooning. Stripped of color, the ironwork of their composition shows off the tough structure of abstract expressionism. Through Feb. 2.

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th. Francis Bacon's tragic views of humans great and lowly. Through Jan. 12. Also on view: 20th century drawings by such masters as Munch, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, De Kooning, Motherwell, Tobey and others. Through Jan. 5.

METROPOLITAN--Fifth Ave. at 82nd. Seventy recent additions to the print collection. Choice are a red chalk drawing, Prudence, by the Dutch Master Engraver Goltzius; Rembrandt's masterly little etching, Landscape with a Man Sketching (circa 1645); and a rare Goya lithograph, Men Spitting at a Fire, showing the Spaniard's early use of the medium. Also on view is the Cubiculum, a Pompeian bedroom whose walls are slathered with paintings. Buried for 18 centuries under cinders from Mount Vesuvius, it was dug up in 1900 and only recently restored by the museum.

WHITNEY--22 West 54th. The whole place is turned over to its annual invitational meet on what's up in contemporary U.S. painting (see ART). Through Feb. 2.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM--Eastern Parkway. Annually the museum puts on view as a special holiday treat a major painting never shown before in the U.S. This year's choice is one of the great treasures of the Staatliche Museen in West Berlin: Albrecht Altdorfer's The Adoration of the Shepherds. Painted between 1518 and 1520, it is one of the finest specimens of the brilliant interplay of night and light at which this late-Renaissance German excelled. Through Jan. 5.

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