‘Helga Pictures’ Arrive This Week

“Helga” comes to town this week, preceded by nationwide rumors that she had once been the obsession of one of America’s most popular living painters.

The painter, as any TV news watcher, Time or Newsweek reader will know, is realist Andrew Wyeth. The implied mistress, Helga Testorf, was his model for 15 years. She will appear here in about 85 drawings and watercolors, in “Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures,” Thursday to July 10 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The “Helga” frenzy began in 1986 when Wyeth unveiled a “secret” cache of some 240 works. Done between 1970 and 1985, they all depicted the voluptuous woman, sometimes in the nude.

Discovery of new Wyeth works, the suggestion of an affair (Wyeth’s wife reportedly said she hadn’t been told about her husband’s seeming obsession) and a major art world debate over the works’ artistic merit propelled the story into headlines nationwide. One critic called Wyeth “more of an illustrator than a painter.” The Metropolitan and other major museums didn’t accept the traveling show.

How has all this free advertising affected attendance?

Apparently positively, though it’s impossible to tell whether it was Wyeth’s work alone or all the hoopla that kept turnstiles revolving.

The National Gallery in Washington, which organized the show and introduced it (with 140 works) last May, rated it seventh on its top 10 list of most highly attended exhibits.

Attendance figures for its next stop at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston were not available at press time.

However, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, where the exhibit concluded a 2 1/2-month run April 10, reports that it had about twice as many visitors this February as it did last February.

“Wyeth’s general popularity did help, but so did the publicity. We had people who don’t normally like Wyeth come to see the exhibit,” a museum spokeswoman said.

LACMA Director Earl A. (Rusty) Powell predicts healthy crowds for the show’s local stint.

“I understand the exhibition is doing very well in Houston,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “The indications are that it’s going to be a very successful and positive exhibit here.”

Although LACMA had not begun its major advertising campaign at the time Powell was interviewed, he said that more than 62,000 tickets have been distributed to museum members, who are given two free tickets each to special exhibitions. That number, which also reflects some tickets purchased by members, is “more than usual” for an exhibit of this size and importance, Powell said.

NOW SEE THIS: “The Caddy Court,” Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz’s rolling rendition of the U.S. Supreme Court, pulls into Santa Barbara on Tuesday for a six-day stay.

The artwork on wheels is a white, 1978 stretch Cadillac limousine that had its local debut last December at the International Contemporary Art Fair. Inside sit nine black-robed judicial figures whose heads are made of laminated animal skulls including those belonging to deer, coyote and bighorn sheep.

“The Caddy Court,” which is driveable, will be on view in front of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art on Tuesday from noon to 6 p.m. It will then be parked on State Street in Santa Barbara in various sites between the 800 and 1400 blocks, returning to the museum for its final day of exhibition, May 1.

UC San Diego recently inaugurated into its Stuart Collection of art a major installation by New York-based artist William Wegman. “La Jolla Vista View,” complete with binoculars, benches and a drinking fountain, parodies tourists’ scenic view rest stops at national parks.

KUDOS: Josine Ianco-Starrels, Long Beach Museum of Art senior curator and former Artnews writer, has been honored by the California Art Education Assn. for her contributions to art education and the arts. Ianco-Starrels was given an award of appreciation for 20 years of help and encouragement of emerging artists and for creating education programs that have been used as models in Los Angeles.