Peter Schjeldahl reviews Alexei Jawlensky at the Neue Galerie, New York (through May 29) and Vija Celmins at Matthew Marks, New York (through April 15).

Schjeldahl writes: “… The [Jawlensky] show ends with the kicker of a room of small, even tiny, paintings, unfamiliar to me, of an abstracted face. A black stripe serves for the nose, horizontal bands for the eyes and mouth. The nose and eyes present as a cruciform, against grounds of vertical strokes in thinned colors that glow like stained glass.”

“When looking at a Celmins picture,”Schjeldahl notes, “I can never decide whether to take it in as a supremely elegant object or to gaze into it with free-falling imagination. I am off balance while transfixed.”