Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 41

SECTION In This Section Editorials Page 2 Books Page 5 Entertainment Pages 6-10 Travel Pages 11-14 Features Editorials SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 1975 fie Institute of Arts, A Heroic Show from France Detroit ifrceJJrcss we see him as he then truly appeared a dignified, rather formal and austere gentleman. The instability of the revolutionary period led to the seizing of power by "commoner" Napoleon who then needed legitimacy, a pedigree, for a world used to kings. The great artists of the time were commissioned to provide it in their portraits and allegories of him. Ingres, with his "Jupiter and Thetis" used a Roman myth to establish Napoleon's national and supposedly divine power. He was likened to Jupiter, king of the gods: fearsome, heroic and omnipotent.

Jupiter in this myth is approached by a beautiful, clinging and sensuous Thetis created by Ingre's famous drawn contour line so Jupiter's position is seen as not unlike Napoleon's own. This is pictorial propaganda at its greatest. After the exile of Napoleon, the monarchy was restored only to be destroyed once again by the Revolution of 1830. Caught up in this Revolution, Delecroix, in his romantic, very emotional "Liberty Leading the People" captured the spirit of revolution. The Goddess of Liberty, a strong noble looking woman, is materialized to lead a mismatched French army of the people in a stormy assault for freedom.

The suffering, the terror, the dead bodies over which the army climbs to reach the barricades, the emotional, quickly moving colors and brush strokes, all increase our excitement and, with it's heroic size create the you-are-there feeling of personal involvement which inflamed the imagination and excited the people. This work is clearly the keynote painting of the exhibition. Hours during the exhibition are Fridays 9:30 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sat and Sun. 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Admission to the show is $2, students $1, free to Founders Society members, senior citizens and children under 12 accompanied by an adult.

The -rather scholarly 700-page catalogue is $14.95 Bt the Museum bookshop. Greuze, Gros and Robert who recorded their world as they saw it. It is this combination of artists and subject matter which makes the show so revealing a portrait of the time and suggests the amount of work that was involved in assem-. bling it. The principal organizers were Frederick J.

Cummings, director of Detroit's museum; Pierre Rosenberg, curator of painting at the Louvre and Robert Rosen-blum, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The galleries containing the exhibit are divided into four parts, each part representing, through different colored walls, a distinct period in the chronology of the time: a rich luxurious chocolate brown for Louis XVI; hard steel gray for the French Revolution; icy cold blue during Napoleon's reign and a royal gold for the return of the Bourbon monarchy. It is no coincidence that access to the exhibition is through the Art Institute's permanent collection of classical Greek sculpture and vases. Such sources were a major influence on many of the French artists. Also appropriate is the work which introduces the exhibit: Callet's portrait fo the decadent Louis XVI, representative of the monarchy which brought on the French Revolution.

HERE IS A SAMPLING of some of the works in the show: With the moralizing grayness of his neoclassical work, "The Death of Jacques Louis David was preparing the public for a revolution against injustice. The theme of the painting the triumph of reason and morality is portrayed by Socrates, about to commit suicide by drinking poison hemlock, sacrificing himself, in Spartan simplicity, for his principles. Two years after David completed this work, the Revor lution erupted. The major political figure of the Revolution was Robespierre, a name associated with the reign of terror and the guillotine. But in a portrait by Madame Labille-Guiard BY MARSHA MIRO Special to th Frtt Prtst The first official event of Detroit's Bicentennial celebration an art event of international importance opens to the public Wednesday at the Detroit Institute of Arts after five years of planning and the combined efforts of the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and our own Institute.

The exhibit entitled "French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution," covers the work of 94 artists who were at work in France during that critical historical period. Many of the paintings have never before been shown in the United States. Originally consisting of 200 paintings culled for the most part from French museums, the exhibition began last November at the Louvre, will be here through May 4 and will complete its run through the summer at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. BECAUSE of the expense insurance costs alone were prohibitive the number of works have been pruned to 149 for the U.S. visit.

The pruning has merely tightened the exhibit and, despite protests from some art scholars, is certainly more digestible and no less exciting for the editing. What Detroiters will see include depictions of actual events, portraits including some famous paintings of Napoleon landscapes, genre, ancient history and mythology, all showing the drama and emotion of 18th and 19th century France, as it underwent upheaval and revolution. These events began with the downfall of the monarchy under Louis XVI, ran through the turbulence of the French Revolution, through the rise and fall of Napoleon and ended with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and its destruction by the Revolution of 1830. The exhibition is also a combination of visionary artists of major importance in the history of art, such as David, Ingres, Geri-cault and Delacroix, men who affected the world with their work, and masters like nw I -v. A INI A il rv Detail from "Liberty Leading the People" by Delacroix: Its is clearly the keynote paintng of the exhibition." A RESERVOIR OF RESOURCES Ant ica Slowlv Yields Its Secre ts fV! 'M' Hit BY MALCOLM W.

BROWNE New York Times New Service Adm. Richard E. Byrd, broadcasting from Antarctica in the 1930s, conveyed through the static a vivid sense of the breathtaking excitement of an enchanted place ---deadly, indeed, but also indescribably interesting and beautiful. Now, despite some flaws, Antarctica and the men who work there still closely match the American explorer's depiction. In an eight-day tour, one visitor found the grandeur of a vast mountain range, the endless sweep of the polar plateau and the luminous, blue menace of crevasse in a monstrous glacier as exciting as they must have been in the old days.

Though there is almost regular air service, relatively few people set foot on Antarctica, and far fewer see the interior and the South Pole. To reach such places these days without the help and support of the National Science Foundation would almost ba comparable to trying to go to the moon without the help of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Of 100 newsmen who asked to visit Antarctica this year, seven were chosen and six, including this reporter, went. Having passed a battery of physical tests, we "were flown to the staging base at Christchurch, New Zealand and, thence, to Antarctica, with trips to McMurdo Station, Scott Base and the South Pole. There is a cheerful bustle of coming and going in Antarctica these days, suggestive both of the beginning of a new college year and of a destroyer's arrival in port after a long, hard cruise.

It is the time of midsummer change, when bearded men in filthy red or green parkas leave their winter warrens for the outer world, to be replaced by a startlingly young-looking batch of scientists, technicians, contractors, pilots and administrators. Even some senior administrators and researchers are still in their twenties. As cracks widen in the Ross Sea ice and snow turns to slush under 24-hour-a-day sunlight, penguins, skuas, seals, husky dogs and people grow frisky. Such serious matters as survival and research are momentarily put aside. A few older hands continue to raise eyebrows at the presence of women in Antarctica again.

This year the American community will include 12 women among the several thousand men staying for varying periods. THE PEOPLE LEAVING after 10 months isolation, darkness and temperatures ranging to more than 100 degrees below zero, seem eager to rejoin families and friends in the "real world." The new arrivals at this inaccessible place seem equally happy to have joined an exclusive community. Dr. Marc Bckoff and his wife, Anne, a zoologist, skipped hand in hand past a stark row of military-style quonset huts at McMurdo Station, where they were waiting for transportation to Cape Crazier to study an Emperor Penguin rookery. "This is the greatest place in the world," Bekoff said, "and getting here is the realization of a dream, although maybe we'll be so sick of penguins we'll be ready to shoot them in the zoo by the time we leave." Despite the summer sun the temperature at McMurdo rarely rises above 40 degrees.

The summer temperatures at the South Pole are brisker still, hovering around 10 below zero. The lowest temperature recorded on earth, 126.9 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, was experienced on Aug. 24, 1960, at the Soviet Union's Wostok Siation, in Eastern Antarctica. Scientists studying the 5,000 Wedell seals living on and under the ice of McMurdo Sound are assisted by such gadgets as underwater television and by radio transmitters attached to the animals' flippers that emit signals during mating. The seals must frequently be handled they are all counted once a week and to pacify them while blood samples are taken or tags are attached to flippers, bags are thrown over their heads.

Attaching the bags usually involves a brief struggle, although the seals seem to like human beings, and there are always volunteer office workers, cooks and others to do the work. They say it is like roping calves at a rodeo. Tunnel Living At the South Pole Despite the fascination of Antarctica, some of its residents military in particular prefer the overheated, windowless life of the buildings, which house fairly elaborate bars and lounges. The local liquor store has found it necessary to ration supplies. A closed-circuit television station broadcasts films like "Deep Throat" to any who are interested.

"Tunnel life," a permanent aspect of Antarctica, has changed for the better at the South Pole, since January when a new station was inaugurated. Its heart is a huge aluminum dome designed to keep the ever-drifting snow from engulfing the three large buildings inside. Old South Pole Station, built in 1957, was being crushed under the weight of accumulated snow, and its deformed rooms and tunnels, shored up with creaking posts, have been abandoned. I ftimimim.irrt&iiWi SHY FOXE Fanne Never Did Strip To the Buff in Detroit FANNE FOXE NEVER did take it all off at her Rooster- tail strip act while at the Detroit nightclub last week. Rut Detroit Police nevertheless kept a vice cop there for both evening shows from Monday through Saturday.

Despite bad reviews, the Roostertail was jammed nearly every evening. And the bad reviews didn't just come from the critics. Roostertail owner Jerry Schoenith himself was heard to say if he had charged more than the $15 a ticket for the show, he would have rebated the excess over $15. Slaying Home GOV. MILLIKEN HAS declined an invitation to the an nual Gridiron Club's spring dinner and roast March 22.

He said he opposes out-of-state travel for government workers when the trip won't net the state something in return. The dinner is held in Washington, D.C. natural "anti-freeze in their systems. Scientists also know there are enormous resources in fuel, minerals and food under the ice. saken hole like the South Pole.

But if you'd ever wintered over in Antarctica, you'd know it's worth every penny." The Common Cold Is Virtually Unknown In the constant darkness and isolation of winter at the South Pole, where temperatures fall to 100 degrees below zero and lower and 200-mile-an-hour winds blast obstacles to powder, the common cold is virtually unknown. The remote outposts of human life strewn across the vast continent may prove to be the healthiest places on earth at least during the long winter, when they are completely out of physical contact with the rest of the world. The main clinical drawback is that when the inhabitants return to more hospitable parts they become ill much more readily than other people, their immunity systems apparently having temporarily atrophied. The physiological changes, which presumably would be similar to those of long space flights, are the subject of a study beginning here. THE PROGRAM, under the overall direction of Dr.

Harold G. Muchmore of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, will be conducted locally by an assistant. Dr. Michael Hummer. Hummer, who is 27 and single, is one of 18 men selected for the current tour at South Pole Station.

He'll stay about Please turn to Page 4D, Col. 1 In the polar region of McMurdo Sound, scientists study Wedell seals, Just one of 70 research programs, ranging from weather studies to fish with THE DOME, built geodesically, consists of five-inch aluminum plates, all carried in hundreds of trips by C-130 turboprop transport planes on skiis. One hundred and sixty-four feet in diameter and 52 feet high, it was completed three years ago and is designed to last 15 to 20 years a long life by polar standards. The novelty of standing on or running around the South Pole wears off quickly, especially since the flag marking the Pole moves with the ice in which it is stuck at the rate of about a foot a month. (Physicists always know where the real Pole is, but the layman has only the fairly inaccurate flag).

Therefore, a new indoor movie theater, library, sauna, bar, gymnasium and game rooms are especially welcome to teams accustomed to quarters resembling those of a submarine. The new station cost the National Science Foundation, which pays for all U.S. Antarctic programs, $6 million for material alone. This is a substantial sum when compared with the annual Antarctic budget of $25 million, which pays not only for research and building but for Navy support from icebreakers, planes and helicopters and for other necessities. The relative luxury of new American buildings is a result of a gradual shift in operating responsibility from the Navy to a civilian contractor, Holmes Narver, of Anaheim, Calif.

"The Navy made us all live like tunnel rats," a scientist said. "You may think this new station is too much of a palace to squander on 15 years of research at a god-for- Gas Glut WHILE PRESIDENT FORD is preaching conservation, oil companies with stations in the Detroit area (especially Standard) are quietly plugging consumption. They're asking retailers to lower prices but won't lower the wholesale price. That's because gas is plentiful now, but people still aren't buying. Last year it was the oil embargo crunch, but this year sales are down yet farther..