UPTOWN

ALEXANDER CALDER -- Perls, 1016 Madison Ave. at 78th. Next month Calder's mobiles will take to the air at the Guggenheim. Meanwhile, some 30 circus drawings, all done before he started launching tin and wire into upper living space, make a fitting prelude to the retrospective. Perls also has a few mobiles. Through Nov. 14.

GEORGE RICKEY -- Staempfli, 47 East 77th. Calder is not the only artist who keeps sculpture moving. Rickey and Bury (see below) are both kinetic craftsmen, and their galleries share the same floor.

Rickey's tall, stainless-steel blades and showers of metal shards shift gently with changing air currents, sound like the wind whispering through TV antennas.

Through Nov. 14.

POL BURY -- Lefebre, 47 East 77th. Bury is a Paris-based Belgian who seems to be catching on everywhere. He was a hit in Venice, and U.S. museums were snatching up his work before this first New York show even opened. It consists of electrically animated nails, sticks, balls and tiny nylon wires that twist, tangle and topple, clutch and clash, then move smoothly together again, always with a sly, sensuous suggestion of human activity. Through Nov. 7.

MARINA NUNEZ DEL PRADO and SIDNEY WOLFSON -- World House, 987 Madison Ave. at 77th. New works by Miss Del Prado, a Bolivian sculptress who exploits the grain of exotic woods, smooths onyx and marble into virginal shapes that often echo the human form; and 40 paintings by New Yorker Wolfson, whose subtle shades sing in soft harmony. Through Nov. 7.

ROMARE BEARDEN -- Cordier & Ekstrom, 978 Madison Ave. at 76th. "As a Negro," says Bearden, "I do not need to go looking for 'happenings,' the absurd, or the surreal, because I have seen things out of my studio window on 125th Street that neither Dali nor Beckett nor Ionesco could have thought possible." With fantasy and pathos rather than bitterness, Bearden turns out blues to hang on a wall. From cutouts -- crooked nose, laughing eyes, tearstained cheek -- he collages surreal cityscapes of Negro life, then photographs and enlarges them, for the liveliest views on the avenue. Through Oct. 24.

GRUPPE SPUR -- Osborne, 965A Madison Ave. at 75th. In 1957 four young Munich artists began exhibiting together, calling themselves the Gruppe Spur to describe their search for a new path. Lothar Fischer sculpts figures that resemble the inscrutable distortions of a first-grader's picture of teacher. Painter Heimrad Prem piles hills and houses in pell-mell landscapes, colors them pink. Hans-Peter Zimmer paints big green frogs that seem to have something to croak about. Helmut Sturm's Romeo and Juliet embrace in a tangled orgy of lines, their faces hidden by a bright red blush. Through Nov. 14.

RICO LEBRUN -- Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. Lebrun was preoccupied with an image of humanity, "grand in meaning, even when disfigured by adversity." His paintings are filled with pain, and his illustrations for Dante's Inferno are some of the most forceful ever done.

Caseins and oils released since his death last May. Through Nov. 7.

GOTTFRIED HONEGGER and JOHN HULTBERG --Jackson, 32 East 69th. Two painters more dissimilar than Honegger and Hultberg would be hard to find; side by side, they make a compelling comparison. Honegger uses plastic for his matiere, carves a cold geometry in mild relief, then slathers it with rich warm red. Hultberg's bleak white landscapes, strewn with junked cars, abandoned buildings and other detritus, toll winters of discontent. Through Nov. 19 and 21 respectively.

ANDRE DERAIN--Hirschl & Adler, 21 East 67th. From the artist's widow, the Louvre and other collectors, the gallery picked 50 works that show Derain's growth from a "wild beast" to his tamer postwar years, when his goal was not so much to lead the contemporary pack as to bring the past up to date. Works rarely seen in this country. Through Nov. 21.

EDOUARD VUILLARD--Wildenstein, 19 East 64th. Bonnard and Vuillard shared a studio, and were the leading painters in the French symbolist movement that met regularly at Stephane Mallarme's "Tuesdays." Both can be seen in major shows in New York: Bonnard at the Museum of Modern Art, Vuillard in this wide sampling that spans his long career. Through Nov. 21.

MASTERS OF THE JAPANESE PRINT--Asia House, 112 East 64th. Selections from ten masters of the Japanese woodblock begin with Moronobu's black-and-white prints of noblemen, conclude with the teahouse beauties of the late 18th century impresario, Utamaro. Through Dec. 13.

JAMES BROOKS--Kootz, 655 Madison Ave. at 60th. Brooks, a leading abstract expressionist, belonged to the same "club" as Pollock and De Kooning, gives his new paintings such non-names as Nerry and Thypin because "I don't want to lead the viewer into any ideas about the painting." The viewer can see for himself that Brooks is a master of soft, eye-soothing color. As for Nerry, it's a patch of pale blue floating over some soft hilly lines. Through Nov. 7.

MIDTOWN

MORRIS LOUIS--Emmerich, 41 East 57th. When Morris Louis died two years ago at 50, much of his work remained unseen. Since then a small but important showing at the Guggenheim last year, and another at this summer's Venice Biennale, have helped win him wide respect. The exhibition consists of ten gigantic (9 ft. by 16 ft.) paintings, never shown before, in which ribbons of raw color unfurl and stain unprimed canvas. Through Nov. 7.

DAVID SMITH --Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th. Steel Sculptor David Smith's new works have a new monumentality. In one series, many ten feet tall, cubes and crossbeams hang in precarious balance like a pile of tumbling blocks on stainless-steel shafts, their gleaming surfaces cut with lightning-like strokes. Twenty-nine pieces in all. Through Nov. 14.

PETER SAUL--Frumkin, 41 East 57th. Saul's sharp observations on society's sillinesses are somewhat trite. For all their superficiality, though, his bright colors and looping lines suggest that a serious young talent is at work. Twelve paintings. Through Oct. 31.

JOSEF ALBERS--Janis, 15 East 57th. At 76, Albers does all manner of strange and beautiful things with simple squares. Forty new oils. Through Oct. 24.

HAROLD TOWN--Bonino, 7 West 57th. A Canadian, Town, 40, brushed his way to international fame without ever leaving his native Toronto. In his new works, a visual war is waged on canvas as white cuts color, black fights for attention and space, and shapes bounce around like boomerangs. Through Nov. 7.

MUSEUMS

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th. An exceptional exhibition of American drawings selected by Curator Lawrence Alloway includes work by such senior draughtsmen as Gorky and Tobey, along with some by relative newcomers, including Larry Poons and Sven Lukin. A handsome historical precis of Albert Gleizes' offers the U.S. its first chance to review the work of one of the earliest cubists. The drawings run through Oct. 25, the Gleizes' show through Nov. 1.

METROPOLITAN--Fifth Ave. at 82nd. The Met is hustling to complete new galleries and other surprises it plans to unwrap later this season. Meanwhile, there is still plenty to see: ancient Peruvian ceramics, fashion vignettes, English transfer-printed pottery, and the customary wealth of great paintings.

GALLERY OF MODERN ART--Columbus Circle at 59th. A retrospective of the German impressionist, Lovis Corinth, who won artistic fame before his death in 1925. Banned by the Nazis, his work for many years remained obscure in this country (TIME, Sept. 25). Corinth painted hundreds of self-portraits that represent his most powerful work. Through Nov. 1.

WHITNEY--22 West 54th. The big "welcome back" that realism is getting these days must come as a surprise to Edward Hopper, who, at 82, is the best proof that it never went away. For nearly 60 years he has been hammering away at the nerve ends of despair with pictures of lonely trains leaving town, haunted-looking nudes, all-night lunch counters suffocating with silence. A 180-work retrospective. Through Nov. 29.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART--11 West 53rd. The sculpture garden sports new acquisitions by Ferber, Calder and Ipousteguy. The lures inside are Pierre Bonnard's luminescent paintings (through Nov. 29), prints made by painters and sculptors (through Oct. 25), collages, silk-screen prints and sculptures by Britain's Eduardo Paolozzi (through Nov. 10), and 15 works by German Sculptor Guenter Haese (through Nov. 15).

PIERPONT MORGAN LIBRARY--29 East 36th. The Morgan Library has dug up a jewel: Catherine of Cleves' Book of Hours. Considered the finest Dutch manuscript in existence, it was painted about 500 years ago for Catherine's wedding by an artist known only as the Arenberg Master. Its two volumes became separated and one was thought to be the complete work until last year, when the library discovered the second half in a private European collection. His exquisitely executed miniatures, 157 in all, depict saintly themes with delightful rusticity: the Holy Family supping by a cozy fireplace; the infant Christ toddling in a walker. Through Nov. 7.

BROOKLYN--Eastern Parkway. Twenty years of Antonio Frasconi's graphics: 150 woodcuts and lithographs, twelve illustrated books. Through Nov. 29.

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