Critics' Choice

ART

HELEN FRANKENTHALER: A PAINTINGS RETROSPECTIVE, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. In the '50s, Frankenthaler's lyrical washes of color had a decisive influence on abstract expressionism; today she ranks as America's best-known living woman artist. These 40 canvases from four decades show why. Through Aug. 20.

L'ART DE VIVRE: DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN IN FRANCE, 1789-1989, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City. Jewelry commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, cutlery from Maxim's, art nouveau furniture and haute couture gowns are among 500 objects displayed in glittering tribute to France's bicentennial. Through July 16.

BOOKS

THE GOOD TIMES by Russell Baker (Morrow; $19.95). What propelled Baker from the childhood he so memorably described in Growing Up (1982) to his present distinction as a columnist for the New York Times? Here is the answer, in a winsome memoir of his early newspapering days, including big-league stints in London and Washington.

THE LIFE OF GRAHAM GREENE, VOL. 1: 1904-1939 by Norman Sherry (Viking; $29.95). Greene may be the most elusive big fish still swimming in the shrinking pond of English letters, but this fascinating, obsessively detailed biography hooks him solidly. Hardly a question about the author goes unanswered, and Greene's best years, those of The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair, are yet to come.

MY SECRET HISTORY by Paul Theroux (Putnam; $21.95). Theroux has grown famous writing both novels and travel books. Now he produces an entertaining fiction about a man who does both, a teasingly autobiographical portrait of the artist as a young stud.

MUSIC

CLINT BLACK: KILLIN' TIME (RCA). Real nice, unassuming, go-to-meeting country music, by a new Nashville hotshot. Black sounds like Randy Travis with a few more years of book learning, and he's got a knack for cozy melodies too.

DR. JOHN: IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD (Warner Bros.). When jazz meets up with rhythm and blues, it's usually less a shoot-out than a sellout: one or the other gets sold short. Dr. John, a surgical master at the piano and a good, gruff vocalizer, is one physician with a solid prescription to do both styles right -- and proud.

10,000 MANIACS: BLIND MAN'S ZOO (Elektra). Love songs like petitions, songs of conscience that come straight from the heart. This is a band with folkie inclinations, rock grit and a graceful way with a cry of pain. Poison in the Well, an unfortunately timely tune about environmental pollution, ought to be piped into the Exxon boardroom.

THEATER

CYMBELINE. A mildly punkish off-Broadway version of Shakespeare's odd tragedy stars Oscar nominee Joan Cusack (Working Girl) as a wife wrongly accused of infidelity.

- THE LISBON TRAVIATA. Terrence McNally's homosexual tragicomedy features opera, violence and a terrific cast of off-Broadway veterans.

ON THE TOWN. Washington's Arena Stage gives a fizzy revival to the whole of the classic musical that is exuberantly excerpted in Jerome Robbins' Broadway.

TELEVISON

RACHEL RIVER (PBS, June 21, 9 p.m. on most stations). Pamela Reed (Tanner '88) and Craig T. Nelson (Call to Glory) are featured in this brooding American Playhouse drama about small-town Minnesota.

TRAVELING MAN (HBO, June 25, 9 p.m. EDT). A soul-searching veteran salesman (John Lithgow) learns some painful lessons from a back-stabbing newcomer in a comedy-drama directed by Irvin Kershner (The Flim-Flam Man).

BROADWAY'S DREAMERS: THE LEGACY OF THE GROUP THEATER (PBS, June 26, 9 p.m. on most stations). American Masters launches its fourth season with a chronicle of the innovative 1930s company that introduced method acting to the U.S. and forever changed American theater.

MOVIES

DEAD POETS SOCIETY. Robin Williams is a Mr. Chips with a mission: to inspire his '50s prep school students with reckless passion. Like director Peter Weir, Williams is dead serious this time, donating his celebrity to an imperfect but valuable adolescent drama.

SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS. Not much class, but plenty of struggle at the Lipkin mansion, where everybody upstairs sleeps with everybody downstairs. The setting is swank, the appetites gross in director Paul Bartel's clever comedy of sexual manners.