UPTOWN

WILLEM DE KOONING--Stone, 48 East 86th. Manhattan's Dutch-born modern master tries on lines the way poets try out words. Because he begins with plan and ends with chaotic inspiration, De Kooning's first drawing retrospective provides illuminating clues to the natural forms that shape his abstractions, to the explicitness with which he builds ambiguity, to how his art is made. Forty-odd drawings in charcoal, pencil, pastel, sumi-ink and Sapolin include classical studies of the '30s, samplings from the "Boudoir" and "Attic" series, sketches for Pink Angel (the painting that reportedly copped $60,000 last year), and 16 new pencil lyrics on his most recurrent theme, women. Through Feb. 29.

FLEMISH MASTERS--Duveen, 18 East 79th. No Rembrandts, but no letdown either, because in this show Rembrandt's countrymen outdo themselves: Portrait by Van Dyck, Nymph by Rubens, The Last Judgment by Hieronymus Bosch, The Madonna and Child with Angels by Hans Memling. Sundry other splendors. Through March 31.

KARL KNATHS--Rosenberg, 20 East 79th. The Cape Cod beachcomber looks for poetry and finds it. Painter Knaths, 72, splits space into cubistic slabs of color, lets the canvas--by exposing it here and there--speak for itself, sending blasts of light through black architectural frames. A mixed bag of 18 recent still lifes, landscapes and wild deer makes an attractive show. Through Feb. 29.

LEONARD BASKIN--Borgenicht, 1018 Madison Ave. at 78th. Nine new enigmas in bronze and wood from Smith College's bearded sculpture prof. Huge hulking owls, masks of poets and inscrutable birdmen make a cryptic metaphor of death and immortality. Through Feb. 29.

GEORGES ROUAULT--Perls, 1016 Madison Ave. at 78th. The prolific Frenchman painted thousands, burned hundreds; 20 oils, spanning 50 years, give a spare but instructive glimpse of his trademarks. Fauvist paintings of 1906-07 show passion for pure color; later, thick black lines begin to silhouette jeweled blues and clarets; the "dawn" paintings of the 1950s burst with chrome yellows and greens. Through March 7.

EDUARDO RAMIREZ and EDGAR NEGRET--Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th (third floor). Two modern classicists from Colombia. In Ramirez' wood reliefs, white shade echoes white light, in which an occasional note of intense blue or black resounds. Negret makes bright, painted aluminum sculptures. A decorative show. Through Feb. 29.

EARLY AMERICAN PORTRAITS--Graham, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th (second floor). The masters in oil: Robert Feke, John Wollaston, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully. Keeping them company with drawings: Benjamin West, Thomas Anshutz, others. Until March 21.

CLEVE GRAY--Staempfli, 47 East 77th. A sensitive colorist, Gray smears his canvases with dark primaries and brilliant pastels, composing his abstractions with a sure feel for tonal balance and direction in space. Best: Vernal, a large dynamic treatment of vertical blues against white. Through Feb. 22.

RUTH GIKOW--Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. Both Artist Gikow and her husband, Jack Levine, are figure painters. Where he sings out loud and clear with satire, she suffocates with silence. The most effective painting here is Estrangement: a baby in a high chair flanked by two impassive adults is a sober evocation of a new life headed for solitary confinement. Through Feb. 15.

M. F. HUSAIN--New India House, 3 East 64th. India's most popular contemporary painter is a 48-year-old bearded brush master whose expressionistic oils of rajahs, elephants and women recall Rouault: the bright blocks of color and leaded lines give a serenity that approaches reverence. Through Feb. 17.

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC--Wilden-stein, 19 East 64th. The misshapen mite of Montmartre was born 100 years ago. His work, a remembrance of things past, seems most apt for the present. Lautrec's acid gall ate holes in the passing masquerade big enough to reveal most human deformities. More than 50 paintings on loan include six not seen before in the U.S., one a deliciously bawdy Actress with Green Gloves, plus 100 drawings, lithographs and posters. Through March 14.

JACQUES VILLON--Seiferheld, 158 East 64th. The first retrospective since his death last year shows off 102 of the more than 600 prints that the self-styled "cubist impressionist" made in a 70-year career. There is an 1891 portrait of his father, etched when the artist was 16 and signed G. Duchamp, his name before he took that of the French medieval poet; two of his most famous cubist prints, Les Haleurs and La Table Servie (plus an oil to match the latter); a Picasso-style Nature Morte, signed by both Villon and the Spanish master. Through March 20.

DORIS CAESAR--Weyhe, 794 Lexington Ave. at 61st. Twenty new bronzes, smaller than life, of the female figure. While Sculptress Caesar's sturdy equilibrium and delicate curves clothe her distorted nudes in a sympathetic mood of grace under stress, her commentary on modern woman seems a bit wry: overendowed elsewhere, they all have long necks and tiny heads. Through March 30.

MIDTOWN

LYMAN KIPP--Parsons, 24 West 57th. Kipp's chiseled black bronzes, their smooth lines heightened by gentle corrugations, are mounted on stilts, whimsically suggesting ancient Egyptian birdhouses. Through Feb. 29.

MILTON RESNICK--Wise, 50 West 57th. Resnick has taken a synagogue for his new studio and performed a happy wedding of mood and materials. These new abstractions make a comely contrast with 24 older offerings, going back to 1939, which are on view at the Feiner Gallery downtown (43 Fifth Ave. at 11th). Both shows through Feb. 29.

THE CLASSIC SPIRIT IN 20TH CENTURY ART--Janis, 15 East 57th. From Arp to Anu-szkiewicz, Kandinsky to Ellsworth Kelly, a chasm as wide as the century--or is it? Three generations of purists make the crossing look as easy as a moonlight swim. Through Feb. 29.

JAMES McGARRELL--Frumkin, 32 East 57th. The Decameron retold, without endings, in nine large oils. This young Hoo-sier's powerful allegories of love and death reek with the refuse of squandered lives. Through Feb. 29.

JACKSON POLLOCK--Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th. The largest retrospective of abstract expressionism's most inventive practitioner traces the phylogeny of a style, but unhappily omits some of its greatest examples. Present: 150 paintings and drawings. Through Feb. 15.

AFRO--Viviano, 42 East 57th. The lusty Italian modern has seldom shown such ease of movement or elegance of color. Under a skein of spidery black lines, his racy brush all but buries yesterday's newsprint with a bright, blunt panoply of gouache. Twenty-five new works. Through Feb. 21.

SEONG MOY--Grand Central Moderns, 8 West 56th. Moy's abstract landscapes burst with the sunbright spectrum of the impressionists, a pleasant diversion from the formalized woodcuts for which he is noted. Effectively bridging the gap between the two are a series of darkly textured oil-on-board paintings. Through Feb. 20.

GEORGE L. K. MORRIS--Downtown, 32 East 51st. Whether plastering kitchen utensils on his pictures, as he did in 1936, or hurling black boomerangs through framed space, as he does now, Morris is essentially an architect of the canvas. Ten recent abstractions, plus a backward look at ten older works. Through Feb. 21.

NORIO AZUMA--Associated American Artists, 605 Fifth Ave. at 49th. An exciting development in prints. This Japanese-American painstakingly silkscreens oil on canvas as many as 18 times, achieves stunning compositions that might pass for painting or print. Through Feb. 29.

MUSEUMS

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK-Fifth Ave. at 103rd. The museum's annual valentine is a display of old-fashioned deathless devotion. "Rhetoric and Old Lace" catches Cupid on the wing in dainty do-it-yourselfs, three-dimensional hearts overgrown with flowers, voluptuous satins and laces, all from the 19th century. Through Feb. 16.

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th. The museum casts a wide net, pulls in 82 artists from 24 countries for its triennial survey of worldwide contemporary painting. Alberto Giacometti, Wifredo Lam, Robert Motherwell, Antoni Tapies and Victor de Vasarely are the prizewinners. Through March 29.

WHITNEY--22 West 54th. "Maine and Its Artists" surveys the state of inspiration from 1710 to 1963--and the role of Maine in American art is not to be underestimated. Witness its native and adopted progeny: George Bellows, Edwin Dickinson, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth, Gaston Lachaise, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and a host of others. Through March 22.

PIERPONT MORGAN LIBRARY--29 East 36th. Eighteenth century French flower drawings, watercolor on vellum, are on view, along with illuminated manuscripts that illustrate origins and patterns of Christian worship. They go back to an 8th century Psalter, one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of the version carried to England by St. Augustine in the 6th century. Through March 21.

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