Too Good to Be True

In its entirety, Expo 67 (see MODERN LIVING) could be viewed as one long contemporary art gallery. Op, pop and avant-garde photography turn up in dozens of pavilions; the international sculpture garden displays the works of 50 contemporary sculptors. Britain is displaying a monumental Henry Moore; not far from the U.S. pavilion stands Alexander Calder's largest stabile, the 67-ft.-tall Man. But the exhibition that most deeply plumbs Expo's basic theme, "Man and His World," is the international fine arts exhibit, which spans 4,000 years of human creativity.

Housed in its own $3,000,000 air-conditioned building, the international exhibit stands just beside the Place d'Accueil (Welcoming Pavilion) on the "mainland" of Montreal. In five spacious, starkly white-walled galleries watched over by the only armed guards on the Expo site are 193 paintings, tapestries, sculptures, rare books and icons from 20 different countries. (For a sampling, see accompanying color pages.) Even if the rest of Expo 67 were not there, they alone would be worth the trip to Montreal.

Fleshly & Spiritual. To control its brimming cornucopia of masterworks, "Man and His World" has been divided into ten subthemes, such as "Man and Work," "Man the Visionary," and "Man and the Infinite," each of which occupies a separate gallery or subgallery. Even at that, nation joggles nation, period elbows period, continent nudges continent, and style wars with style. Variety and contrast are the result; and the effect is one of growing wonder and awe at the varied attributes and the common humanity of artists everywhere in all times. For a similar experience, a viewer would be forced to voyage from the Louvre to Mexico's Museo de Antropologia, from the temples of Kyoto to the State Historical Museum in Moscow.

In the "Man" gallery, for instance, the compact black granite statue of Amenhotep from Cairo (circa 1400 B.C.) stands juxtaposed with an eagle-eyed 13th century Japanese courtier from Kyoto; a monumental baroque bust of Austria's Emperor Leopold I from Vienna is contrasted with a lissome 11th century Indian sandstone Woman Writing with a Stylus from Calcutta and a ferocious De Kooning Woman II. "Man and Love" ranges from courtly love (a 15th century Arras tapestry) and family love (a Van Dyck from the Hermitage) to fleshly and spiritual love (Blake's Adam and Eve).

Predictably, the most complex single gallery is "Man and His Conflicts," which deals with a maze of human anguish, from loss of faith to homosexuality and political betrayal. It contains Picasso's Woman Weeping (London), Titian's II Bravo (Vienna), Delacroix's Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (Bordeaux), Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat (Chicago) and best of all, the painting that scholars consider one of Rembrandt's finest religious works, St. Peter Denying Christ, from Amsterdam.

The Moon and 2 1/2 Tons. To David G. Carter, director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and a member of the Expo committee that four years ago began drawing up the original list of desired exhibits, the show represents "an ultimate test of the conviction that fine things will always go together." Collecting them became the responsibility of a 15-man international committee of museum officials from eleven countries, who somehow had to persuade governments, museum trustees and individuals to lend ancient, fragile, and often irreplaceable pieces.

"The idea," explains Carter, "was to ask for the moon and hope for the best." Needless to say, the moon was not always delivered. The Louvre was not about to lend the Victory of Samothrace, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art came through with Rodin's 21-ton The Burghers of Calais. Italy was stingy with its Renaissance masters, saved its Donatello for its own pavilion.

Other nations were more generous. Biggest single donor was the U.S., with a total display of 52 works. The Soviets sent a consignment of 13 works rarely seen outside Russia, including four from the Hermitage. Canada helped fill the Italian void with Piero di Cosimo's Vulcan and Aeolus, part of a group of ten pieces that modestly included only two native Canadians, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Paul-Emile Borduas. France obliged with 28 pieces, West Germany with twelve, Japan with ten, Britain with 14, The Netherlands with eight. But some of the most striking contributions came in the smallest shiploads: Tunisia sent a single Roman mosaic floor, Norway two superb canvases by Edvard Munch, Czechoslovakia a single Kokoschka, The Charles Bridge.

Broken Glass. To make its deadline, Expo hired its own expert to speed works through customs, assigned four officials and two armed guards to meet each art work. Heated trucks were on stand-by duty 24 hours a day to transport the pieces to the Expo site because, as the Canadian advisory committee's general secretary, Jean Jacques Besner, says, "We could not risk allowing any of these lovely ladies by Delacroix to catch cold."

The warmest time of all was had when Besner and his group met the Russian ship Bucyra. They were ominously surrounded by about 30 "very tough-looking" Russian sailors and escorted to the captain's cabin. Recalls Besner: "For hours, we drank toasts in vodka to the Hermitage, the Pushkin Museum, to Montreal, Moscow, Leningrad, Expo, Prime Minister Pearson, peace, understanding, love, and I don't know what else, except that there were a lot of broken glasses and it was deep night when we emerged."

By last week all the works, including the Russians', were up in place in the heat-and humidity-controlled museum, and all hands were sufficiently recovered to toast the new exhibition (in champagne) at its opening reception. Said Montreal Art Professor Edwy Cooke, another member of the committee: "We wanted it to be the most important show ever to cross the ocean, the best arts show ever in North America, and we succeeded. When I look at it, it's just too good to be true."

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