PRELIMINARY--BUT BRIGHT--PROSPECTS FOR A GREAT SHOW : Cultural Pact Could Yield Gains in U.S. Exhibit of Soviet-Owned Art

The word PRELIMINARY is stamped in big block letters on a paper listing Soviet-owned paintings to be sent to America this spring in the first exchange arranged under the Geneva summit cultural pact. Preliminary it is, and the label seems both a threat and a promise. Until the roster is definite, on Jan. 10, there’s cause for both dread and anticipation.

The final days of negotiation shroud the possibility for important gains and losses in the U.S. exhibition. Working with the proposed list of 40 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, museum officials could produce a show that’s both a diplomatic coup and an illuminating, historically sound presentation. They also could content themselves with a disorganized crowd-pleaser or do real damage by substituting major works for minor ones.

In short, we could get an exhibition worthy of being billed the greatest U.S.-Soviet exchange of paintings ever, as Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, already has called it. Or we could get a load of nice stuff that doesn’t make much sense as an exhibition but makes everyone feel good.

Either way, we’ll be delighted that the Soviet-owned art is visiting Los Angeles, but there’s an opportunity here that should be taken seriously.

As it stands, the tentative list of 40 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings is impressive mainly because Soviet loans are so rare and this one promises works by major players: Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Pierre-Auguste Renoir--their names are like lights on the marquee of art’s turn-of-the-century move to modernism. They are household words, certain to set box-office records even if the works exhibited hadn’t been confined to Soviet museums for several decades.

Beyond the index of names, however, lies a mixed bag of artworks. The proposed lineup has deep pockets of historical strength and stunning aesthetic triumphs that ought not to be lost in negotiations, but it also has glaring weaknesses that could be corrected for better balance and improved quality. Lacking a logical organizational structure, the projected show is a peculiarly weighted assembly. A couple of artists are granted minisurveys of eight or nine works illuminating their aesthetic development; others get only mini-slices.

Some of the faults merely echo gaps in Soviet collections. Others may reflect the fragility of the art or an understandable reluctance to strip museum walls of works that tourists expect to see there. Still other selections just seem odd, considering the wealth of art at the Hermitage and the Pushkin. (This particular group of work was chosen for the exchange because it was already packaged as an exhibition that formerly traveled to Lugano, Switzerland. Why it was originally organized as a unit is less obvious.)

The impending exchange has enormous significance for art lovers because travel to the Soviet Union is so cumbersome that relatively few Americans attempt it. While the Soviet Union traditionally has been hostile to modern art--sometimes housing it in galleries that are perpetually “closed for renovation” or squirreling it away in shabby, out-of-the-way quarters of the otherwise sumptuous Hermitage--the country has an astonishing collection of late 19th- and early 20th-Century material (not to mention a spectacular plenitude of works from earlier periods). It came to rest in state museums after the revolution when private collections were institutionalized.

The two collectors responsible for amassing most of the art expected to arrive in the U.S. exhibition are Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, who used their eyes and opened their pocketbooks at about the same time as Gertrude Stein’s family. Morozov bought 135 paintings by Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Renoir (and others not in the coming show). Shchukin, who collected widely among the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, became Matisse’s greatest patron. He bought 37 Matisses and even more Picassos.

Other countries have good, even great collections of the seven artists in the proposed U.S. exhibition, but they do not necessarily have all the prime examples. We can see a boggling array of Van Goghs in Amsterdam, for example, and Picasso’s work occupies entire museums in Paris, Antibes and Barcelona. Still, if you’ve seen one or even 100 paintings by artists of this stature, you haven’t seen them all; those in the Soviet Union are necessary for the full picture. In the case of Matisse and Gauguin, it’s not just desirable to see their Soviet-owned paintings, it’s a requisite for anyone who really wants to study their oeuvre.

Museum officials remain optimistic that the “fine-tuning” of the U.S. exhibition list currently under way will yield the best art show ever to come here from the Soviet Union and that changes primarily will be replacements for works seen here in a 1973 exhibition. The first loss does not bode well, however. One of the authentic jewels on the tentative list, Henri Matisse’s masterful interior “The Red Room” has been deleted.

One down, 39 to go. We watch and wait, hoping that the coming extravaganza will fulfill its promise to be much more than a popular curiosity and a diplomatic gesture. Here’s how prospects look at the moment:

--Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is well represented by eight oils covering about 30 years of his development. He moves from Impressionism to the beginnings of Cubism, through the full range of his subjects: portraits, still lifes and landscapes. First setting his subjects apart from their backgrounds, he later explores objects from multiple viewpoints and interweaves whole pictures into faceted rectangles. Two late works expected in the U.S. exhibition--”The Bridge on the Pond” and “Mont Sainte-Victoire as Viewed From Lauves”--are as intricately constructed as if the brush strokes were threads in a hand-stitched herringbone pattern or chunks of broken glass in an irregular mosaic.

--Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), with nine works done over a period of 12 years, isn’t granted the historical range of Cezanne, but his part of the show should be one of its richest segments. All but two works (a dark self-portrait probably painted in Brittany and “Delicious Water,” a representation of the island of Tahiti, done from memory when Gauguin returned to France) were executed during two sojourns in Oceania. We could hope for a fuller view of Gauguin, but with such Tahitian gems as “What, are you jealous?” the only serious worry is that some of those on the current list will be left in the Soviet Union.

--Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is given short shrift in just three paintings, from three consecutive years before his suicide. “The Round of Prisoners” (an interpretation of a Gustav Dore illustration, with the artist inserted in the ring of marchers) and “Portrait of Dr. Felix Rey” (an expressive likeness of an Arles physician who cared for the troubled artist) are superior examples of Van Gogh’s prodigious output at the height of his talent. A more tentative work, “The Arena at Arles,” doesn’t significantly enhance his achievement. Adding one or two of the Pushkin’s best Van Gogh landscapes would be an improvement.

--Henri Matisse (1869-1954) has already been diminished by the loss of “The Red Room,” and the Hermitage’s central display of such large works as “Music,” “The Dance” and “The Conversation” is not scheduled to travel. But “Nasturtiums With the Dance” is, among six early works executed in half a decade. It’s a lovely group of interiors, still lifes and figural works, but it seems skimpy in light of the Soviet Union’s holdings.

--Claude Monet (1840-1926) desperately needs to be fleshed out by later examples of his “Rouen Cathedrals,” “Haystacks,” “Waterlilies” or atmospheric views of London in the Pushkin’s collection. The three works scheduled to travel--”Woman in a Garden” (1867) and two landscapes (both done in 1876)--are only an introduction to the long and distinguished career of this Impressionist master.

--Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), like Cezanne, is set forth in exemplary historical style with an eight-piece survey. Though it only covers an early decade (1900-1910), that period took Picasso from a youthful expression, called “The Embrace,” through his Blue Period and Cubism. His work culminates in his celebrated “Portrait of Ambroise Vollard,” brilliantly meshing an expressive likeness with an analytical approach to space.

--Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is only a footnote, composed of two quite delectable portraits of the late 1870s--”Lady in Black” and a full-length likeness of actress Jeanne Samary in a white evening gown--and a mushy riverside scene done a decade earlier.