Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum

at the Museum of Fine Arts till November 1

THE BOSTON Museum of Fine Arts tried to blow out a hundred candles on its birthday cake, but the wish that came true (as a noted art dealer explained) is like a trip through the Louvre on roller skates. This is all that Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum has turned out to be: a dizzying race through the history of art.

The Met and the MFA celebrated each other's hundredth birthdays this year by exchanging a hundred of the most celebrated works from each museum. This exhibition demonstrates that the Met is unquestionably one of the great storehouses of Western painting, but the Met and the MFA could both take a few lessons in pedagogy from Rousseau's education of Emile. We, the audience, no longer think as children.

"Before the age of reason the child receives images, not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations. An image when it is recalled may exist by itself in the mind, but every idea implies other ideas. When we image we merely perceive, when we reason we compare. Our sensations are merely passive, our notions or ideas spring from an active principle which judges."

The show now in Boston is a presentation of images, not ideas. No attempt has been made to compare the works except by regional school, or by chronological order.

It would have been more interesting to show Canaletto's view of Venice next to Guardi's Venice rather than placing a Tintoretto in between. And why is Vermeer's Young Woman between Claude Lorrain's turbulent Trojan Women and Poussin's Rape of the Sabine Women? For chronology or for a calm between two storms? Why not pair the Vermeer with Holbein's portrait of a German merchant? Pairing would at least make the viewer question why the two paintings were paired. Even pointing out both artists' attention to detail, would be better than just letting the viewer admire the beauty of the work. But can a museum really cause reactions in the observer?

Even an arrangement of the paintings by donors could have commented on the taste of particular families. The elaborate Toilet of Venus was donated by Wiliam K. Vanderbilt. Mary Cassatt, the American Impressionist, helped the Havemeyer family choose the works of Spanish artists. El Greco's View of Toledo is part of the 1929 Havemeyer bequest: a view of Mary Cassatt's judgment.

WITH SUCH a range of works, from Giotto through the Impressionists to Morris Louis, the exhibit could have spoken about the artists' use of light or of plastic form. El Greco's eerie lighting in View of Toledo compared to Tiepolo's ethereal scene of St. Thecla Praying or compared to Monet's Rouen Cathedral could have emphasized the different handlings of light. A trio of Sassetta (the be-beginnings of perspective), Cezanne his constructive view of nature), and Joseph Stella's Coney Island (an engineering of color) could have stated a development in the ordering of nature or of form.

Rarely does a museum have such a selection of great paintings to work with in order to make a statement, but no statement has been made other than "look at our great collection."

Even the catalogue refuses to clarify or elaborate on any statement: the Met's catalogue does little more than add a few footnotes on these masterpieces. "This is essentially a picture book, the remarks beneath the reproductions are brief and to the point"; unfortunately the catalogue's words are too accurate. The shows makes no statement, so there is nothing on which the catalogue can comment or elaborate. The catalogue as 'appetizer or souvenir" hardly does justice to the depth of these masterpieces.

An appropriate theme for the exhibit would have been the change in the concept of art: how once works were produced for specific places or persons but in the 19th century were also made for "unknown clients and unknown walls," that is, museum exhibitions. The concept of "museum," beginning only in the 19th century, creates an unusual teether for most viewers who haven't thought about the function of a painting, but have always looked at them in museums and for museums.

Nor should the viewer think only in terms of the Met's great collection: Boston's own collection is not inferior to the Met's loan. In fact, probably the greatest early American paintings belong to the MFA: John Singleton Copley's portraits and Gilbert Stuart's Martha and George Washington have few equals (not to mention Boston's John Singer Sargent canvasses). If Van Der Weyden's Christ Appearing to His Mother makes the viewer sigh, he should take a look at home- Van Der Weyden's Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, in Boston's permanent collection.

Leaving the exhibition, one can't help but remember a kaleidoscope of images: Sassetta's Magi colorfully dotting a hill, the light passing through the stained-glass window of Vermeer's work, the strength of Picasso's Gertrude Stein, Rousseau's Tropics, with a monkey that looks like he's blowing bubbles with orange bubble gum, or Pollock's Autumn Rhythm defying the limits of its canvas. As if each color of Morris Louis' "unfurled" is a work from the show, one sees them falling off to the sides leaving a space of white light shining from the center. One loses his hold on any one color.

One hundred juxtaposed masterpieces are as hard to look at as one hundred juxtaposed complementary colors: the viewer jumps from canvas to canvas. Where the Met and the MFA could have helped the viewer focus, they have not- they have made no point with their exhibition. Where one could have said, "the cake tasted great," one can only say, "the cake looked beautiful with 100 candles."