Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by Andrea Sachs

ART

LE CORBUSIER: PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, GRAPHICS, Nahan Galleries, New York City. Yes, the great modern architect, who died in 1965, was also a painter. He kept this activity a secret for years, but in these 32 canvases and drawings and 52 graphics, one can see why he regarded it as the "foundation" of his architecture. Through Dec. 26.

SIGMAR POLKE, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The first major North American survey of a restlessly eclectic German artist, 49, whose work ranges from Pop-related imagery through psychedelic fantasy. Polke's recent "alchemical" works incorporate materials (silver oxide, sealing wax, even rat poison) that change color and texture as climatic conditions vary. Through Jan. 13.

LILLA CABOT PERRY: AN AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington. Through her friendship with Monet, Perry (1848-1933), a wellborn Bostonian, wife and mother of three, became a pioneering exponent of Impressionism in the U.S. This handsome exhibition aims to restore her once eminent reputation. Through Jan. 6.

TELEVISION

ABORTION DENIED: SHATTERING YOUNG WOMEN'S LIVES (TBS, Dec. 7, 10:05 p.m. EST). Ted Turner, who has enraged antiabortionists before (he once called them "bozos"), courts another outcry with this pro-choice documentary focusing on the issue of parental consent.

COLUMBO GOES TO COLLEGE (ABC, Dec. 9, 9 p.m. EST). Peter Falk, a new Best Actor Emmy on his mantel, returns as the rumpled cop.

THE TRAGEDY OF FLIGHT 103: THE INSIDE STORY (HBO, Dec. 9, 9 p.m. EST). The events leading up to the Lockerbie crash are recounted in this docudrama, a co-production with Britain's Granada TV, which presents a strong indictment of the security precautions taken by Pan Am and the Federal Aviation Administration.

MUSIC

HOROWITZ: MUSSORGSKY/TCHAIKOVSKY (RCA Victor Gold Seal). A more breathtaking display of the piano's orchestral powers can hardly be imagined than Vladimir Horowitz's 1951 Carnegie Hall performance of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. He summons a galaxy of dynamics and colors from the instrument until, in the finale, he builds a mountain of gloriously controlled sound. The disk also includes Tchaikovsky's popular Concerto No. 1, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. A piano lover's dream.

JANOS STARKER (Mercury Living Presence). Accompanied by Antal Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra, the splendidly patrician Starker restores freshness to three warhorses: Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. This is one of several remarkable recordings immaculately transferred from the Mercury Living Presence series (1951-68), which for sound quality remains unsurpassed.

THEATER

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. The years have only burnished the virtues (and rendered quaint the occasional silliness) of this portrait of Russian village life at the turn of the century. The Israeli actor Topol, who starred in the film, headlines a meticulously crafted and dazzlingly danced revival, on Broadway after a national tour.

SHOGUN. You paid for the book, you sat through the mini-series, now applaud the costumes, scenery and special effects. Oh, yes, there's also a musical going on, but despite the efforts of an able (and authentically Asian) Broadway cast, the show remains as passive and emotionless as the unseen puppet Emperor.

BOOKS

VICTORIES by George V. Higgins (Henry Holt; $19.95). Higgins' dictum, "Dialogue is character is plot," could be no better illustrated than in his latest political novel, about a congressional election in Vermont during the 1960s, when the voters and candidates square off over the Vietnam War.

VOICES IN THE MIRROR by Gordon Parks (Doubleday; $22.95). In this latest memoir, filmmaker-photographer Parks produces a fast narrative of a career that took him from playing the piano in Kansas brothels to the staff of LIFE, where, as the magazine's first black staff photographer, he distinguished himself with coverage of crime, poverty and the upheavals of the counterculture.

MOVIES

HOME ALONE. First you have to get past the preposterous premise and spurious sentiment. Then you can enjoy the comic spectacle of an eight-year-old (Macaulay Culkin) fighting off a pair of inept burglars (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) with the kind of sadistic inventiveness that used to enliven old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The final 20 minutes revive the almost lost art of fall-down- funny physical comedy.

THE SHELTERING SKY. Bernardo Bertolucci has made a swank, sexy, bleak and very beautiful film from Paul Bowles' novel of a married couple on an existential quest for romantic catastrophe in North Africa. Debra Winger and John Malkovich powerfully portray the forlorn souls who languish under the desert's pitiless grandeur.

VISIONS OF SUGARPLUMS

This month The Nutcracker will swirl into cities all around the country. Even the plainest staging will boast Tchaikovsky's rapturous score, the party scene's gentle lesson in golden-rule manners and, for little girls, the chance to dress up in winter finery. The New York City Ballet will have George Balanchine's exquisitely aristocratic Russian version (where dance aficionados often get their first chance to see new corps members perform solos). Across the river in Brooklyn, a new offshoot of the Bolshoi Ballet will show off its own simpler production. The Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle will feature Maurice Sendak's charming sets, and the Houston Ballet will move the family into a turn-of-the-century farmhouse and scale down their bourgeois comforts (presents will be homey food). Sleighs, as usual, will be the favorite transport, but a new conveyance is gaining favor: the Atlanta and Boston ballets and the Joffrey, in Iowa City and Los Angeles, are pumping up hot-air balloons for this year's fantasy trips through space.