Art For The Masses In Six Museums In Midtown Manhattan Virtually The Entire History Of Art Is On Display, Masterpieces From Every Period, Style And Nation

Look, a scene unfolds: Five prostitutes preen and posture and pose. Their eyes are open, but inward-looking. They are filled with resignation - and something else. It is as if we see them through a glass wall, or in some other dimension. The gravity of their souls is as bare as the skin of their bodies. The faces of two are masks of anger, confusion and, perhaps, innocence.

And another: In a middle-class Flemish home of the 15th century, a golden-winged archangel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary. The angel asks if Mary will become the Mother of God; she agrees. And, with her assent, a tiny baby Jesus, already carrying his wooden cross, is flying from heaven to take his place in her womb.

And there are glimpses into other worlds: Two aged middle-age political antagonists, both eventual victims of Henry VIII, face off across a room. A thin, red-haired woman in an elegant pink floor-length nightgown smells a sprig of violets and stares off vacantly, dreamily, into space. Four mustachioed men in colorfully striped sporting clothes play soccer in a clearing in a forested landscape, at once fantastic and yet somehow hyper-real.

These scenes - from great works of Western art spanning more than half a millennium - are of imagined worlds that, in some way, are more intense, more evocative, more real than reality. They are from the minds and eyes and hands of master artists: Pablo Picasso, Robert Campin, Hans Holbein the Younger, Edouard Manet and Henri Rousseau.

And they are all to be found, amid literally hundreds of thousands of other works by other eminent Western (and non-Western) artists, in New York City, on the island of Manhattan, in the greatest collection of art in the world, outside of Paris and Italy.

In six museums - all (with one exception) within two miles of each other in Midtown Manhattan - virtually the entire history of art is on display: sculptures by Rodin, Bernini, Andrea della Robia, Moore and Giacometti; drawings by Michelangelo and Durer; photographs by Arbus, Steichen, Stieglitz, Cunningham, Walker Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams and Weegee.

And then there are the paintings. By Raphael, by Rembrandt, by Vermeer, El Greco, Degas, Pollock, Titian, Tintoretto, Motherwell, Mondrian, Modigliani, Velazquez, Goya, Rubens, Renoir, van Eyck, van Dyck, van Gogh, Matisse, O’Keeffe, Ingres, Monet, Giotto, Cezanne, Gerard David, Jacques-Louis David - the list is endless.

For an American art lover, Manhattan is the Promised Land. And, in its way, without comparison. Indeed, the concentration of artistic genius in the six Manhattan museums is so rich that it’s overwhelming, so extensive that it’s frustrating.

No visitor, even during an extended stay, can see all, or even a large portion, of the artistic treasures. This forces hard choices: Do you ignore Renoir to concentrate on Vermeer? Skip Rembrandt to spend more time with Titian?

Before you even go to New York, you need to get it into your head that, although you will experience some of the world’s great masterpieces, there will be others that you’ll miss. If you accept this disappointment from the start, you won’t be as tempted to run through the buildings one after the other, and will be in a better frame of mind to devote the time and thought and openness to the art that you do get to.

Also, plan ahead. Look at maps to get a sense of where the six museums are in relation to each other and in relation to where you’ll be staying. The laminated “Artwise Manhattan: The Museum Map,” available for $6.95 at many book and map stores, is particularly handy because it not only shows the location of all 42 art and other museums on the island but also provides phone numbers, hours and a short description for each institution.

And get a sense of the museums and their collections before you arrive. Each institution publishes one or more books on its major works. For example, The Frick Collection, at 70th Street and 5th Avenue, is the little collection that could. It has only 125 or so paintings, but, oh, what paintings! And, oh, what a setting!

The collection is housed in the former mansion of Henry Clay Frick, an immensely wealthy industrialist, infamous in labor circles at the turn of the century for his rabid strike-breaking tactics at the Homestead, Pa., steel plant. Most of the collection’s artworks were purchased by Frick, who died in 1919.

Among the highlights are the eloquent self-portrait of a battered but unbeaten 52-year-old Rembrandt; an entire room of frothy Fragonards and one of luscious Bouchers; three tender Vermeers (including the “Officer and Laughing Girl,” featuring one of the most delighted smiles in art history); and Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” in which the transfixed saint is caught in the wash of a divine light.

And, at either end of one wall - with an El Greco “St. Jerome” between them - are Holbein portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.

Although small, the Frick Collection is the subject of three fine books: A $1 words-only but very informative “Guide to Works of Art on Exhibition”; a well-produced “The Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings” (The Frick Collection; $9.50) featuring black-and-white illustrations of every work in the collection; and a sumptuous “Paintings From the Frick Collection” (Harry N. Abrams; $32.50 paperback, $47.50 hardcover).

Just a half-mile to the north is the other end of the museum spectrum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at 82nd Street and 5th Avenue, with more than 3 million works, acres of galleries and numerous special shows, often two or three at a time.

You could spend a lifetime getting to know every nook and cranny of this cornucopia of art riches. Here are five more Vermeers (including the “Portrait of a Young Woman,” with a smile as enigmatic as Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” but oh so innocent), and another Rembrandt self-portrait, older than the one in the Frick, but much less world-weary.

A room of Manet’s works features his subtly suggestive “Woman With a Parrot.” In it, one of his favorite models, Victorine Meurent, wears a voluminous, luxurious pink peignoir as she stands pensively sniffing a few small violets while, on a wooden perch next to her, a parrot, still as stone, also seems lost in thought.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide” (Harry N. Abrams; $12.95 paperback, $19.50 hardcover) is as exhaustive as the museum itself, featuring more than 1,000 color illustrations of major works. But, although nearly 500 pages, it’s small enough to hold in your hand for easy reference while strolling through the institution.

Included in the book are major works housed at The Cloisters, a branch of the Met in Ft. Tryon Park at the far northern end of Manhattan, about five miles to the north.

The Cloisters, built in the form of a medieval monastery and initially funded in large part by John D. Rockefeller Jr., is devoted to the art and architecture of Europe of the 12th to 15th centuries.

It is here that Robert Campin’s wonderfully vivid “Triptych With the Annunciation” - showing the question-bearing Gabriel, the humble Mary (in then-contemporary clothing) and the cross-carrying baby Jesus speeding to his mother-to-be - is on display. Here, too, is the splendidly detailed, extravagantly illustrated, miniature prayer-book-as-work-of-art, “The Book of the Hours of Jean, Duc de Berry,” created around 1409 by three de Limbourg brothers.

Architecture and art of a much different era - the 20th century - are offered back in Midtown Manhattan at the Guggenheim Museum, at 88th Street and 5th Avenue, in a structure stunningly designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Unlike the architect’s long, horizontal buildings in the Midwest, the Guggenheim, completed in 1959, is a huge spiral around an open central court. Museum visitors enter and take an elevator to the topmost floor, and then walk down the gently sloping, circling ramp back to the ground floor, examining the art displayed along the walls.

Often, the greater part of the museum is devoted to temporary exhibits, but the Guggenheim’s permanent collection ranges from van Gogh and the early Impressionists to Warhol and Rauschenberg; from the Abstract Expressionism of Motherwell’s “Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110” to the seemingly naive but psychologically stirring work of Rousseau, including his oddly cheerful painting of soccer players.

For patrons of the institution, “Guggenheim Museum: A to Z” (Guggenheim Museum Publications; $14.95) is a useful, easy-to-carry, full-color paperback guide.

Less than a mile to the south and a block to the east is the Whitney Museum of American Art, at 75th Street and Madison Avenue.

The Whitney, which focuses solely on 20th-century U.S. artists, boasts more than 2,500 works by Edward Hopper, including “Early Sunday Morning” and the often-reproduced “A Woman in the Sun.” Other major figures include Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns and Duane Hanson, whose life-size, lifelike sculpture “Woman With Dog” - in which a woman of late middle-age half-sits and half-leans on a chair, reading her mail - prompts double-, triple-, even quadruple-takes from museum patrons.

Some 100 of the museum’s most significant holdings are reproduced with suitable commentary in a handsome, large-format, full-color paperback catalog (W.W. Norton; $25).

Even more imposing is The Museum of Modern Art’s 600-page book, containing images of more than a thousand of its paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and movie stills - a superb volume (Harry N. Abrams; $40 paperback, $75 hardcover) representing a superb institution.

The museum, also known as MOMA, is on 82nd Street, just west of 5th Avenue, and is considered to have the most comprehensive collection of 20th-century art in the world.

And no wonder.

In one gallery, you can, for example, see the thick, quick stabs of paint with which Vincent van Gogh created the swirling, spinning, circling, shooting lines of energy - blue and yellow - that make up his “Starry Night.” In the next, two Rousseaus - “The Sleeping Gypsy” and “The Dream” - seem to be telling tales from before the birth of language.

Then, through another doorway, and you’re face to face with “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” one of the most significant paintings of the last 100 years.

Who are these five whores? And why, in their silence, do they seem so eloquent?

“Les Demoiselles,” painted by Picasso in 1907 after many studies, was a marker post in Western art, a figurative end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. And, yet, it is also a work unto itself. It stands alone - not as an example of a school or a style or a philosophy of art, but as its own unique self.

“Les Demoiselles” is one of the treasures of a treasure-filled Manhattan. And one of the many feasts in an art-lover’s land of milk and honey.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go The Cloisters: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. (to 4:45 p.m. November through February) Tuesdays through Sundays. Suggested donation: $8 adults, $4 students and senior citizens, children free. Ft. Tryon Park; 212-923-3700. The Frick Collection: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 6 p.m. Sundays. Admission: $5 adults, $3 students and senior citizens (children under 10 not admitted). 1 E. 70th St. (at 5th Avenue); 212-288-0700. Guggenheim Museum: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays through Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Admission: $8 adults, $4 students and senior citizens, children free. 1071 5th Ave. (at 88th Street); 212-423-3500. Metropolitan Museum of Art: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Sundays, 9:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Suggested donation: $8 adults, $4 students and senior citizens, children free. 5th Avenue at 82nd Street; 212-535-7710. The Museum of Modern Art: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays through Tuesdays, noon to 8:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. Admission: $8.50 adults, $6.50 students and senior citizens, children free. 11 W. 53rd St.; 212-708-9480. Whitney Museum of American Art: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 1 to 8 p.m. Thursdays. Admission: $8 adults, $6 students and senior citizens, children free. 945 Madison Ave. (at 75th Street); 212-570-3676.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Patrick T. Reardon Chicago Tribune