Paintings in the Park

Boston's 108-acre Public Garden, where people go to stroll, look at the flowers, or take a turn around the pond on a swan boat, buzzed last week with one of the biggest crowds in its history. The occasion: a city-sponsored exhibit of nearly 300 New England painters and sculptors, with all Boston invited in for a look.

While a loudspeaker rippled out Mozart symphonies and Boccherini sextets and concessionaires did a brisk business in peanuts, long lines of Back Bay dowagers, soda jerks, businessmen and urchins filed through the five long exhibition tents to see what they could see. There was a handsome, windswept Yacht Race by old (82) Portraitist Charles Hopkinson, an expressionistic Adoration of the Magi by David Aronson, paintings by such artists as John Atherton, Gardner Cox, John Marih, George Grosz. And, from lesser lights, there were rows of wild abstractions and novelties, e.g., a huge sculpture done in living moss festooned with geraniums, a "painting" composed of rusty hardware fastened on a golden background.

For the most part, Boston took in the show silently and thoughtfully, occasionally clucking at the stiff prices (up to $7,500 for Sculptor Robert Laurent's bronze Lot's Wife). As usual, the crowd seemed to like the realism best, voted Java Leopard, a startling, almost photographic jungle scene, their favorite in the show. One advance-guard offering, a section of weathered wood decorated with horseshoe nails and bright paint, drew indignant snorts. "Pay $350 for that piece of wood?" exclaimed a shopgirl. "I wouldn't have it in my house." "You can say that again," agreed her chum. Next to one garish green and red abstraction labeled The Eye (price: $1,400) somebody hung a piece of rope with the tag, "Hunk of Rope--$4,000."

But despite the occasional snorts, Boston seemed to enjoy its mass view of the arts. In four days the show drew more than 150,000. Civic leaders were thinking of making it an annual event, inviting painting and sculpture from artists all over the world.

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