Emmanuel Pereire’s work was first shown during the early ’60s in Paris, accompanied by a catalogue essay by Roland Barthes. Although he is a French artist, his work is better known in the United States; this recent exhibition of four large works was Pereire’s first show in his own country in 13 years. Nine years ago at a New York show at the Clocktower, his work was called “bad painting”—then a term used for the reaction against puritan formalist painting. Nothing of the kind could be said of his recent work. Painted on large black pieces of clothlike paper, human silhouettes or body parts seem