Critics' Voices

By TIME''S REVIEWERS/Compiled by Andrea Sachs

ART

LIUBOV POPOVA RETROSPECTIVE, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Though she died at 35 in 1924, Popova is considered one of the leading artists of the Russian avant-garde. She was a determined painter with a passionate sense of the edge where formal research bursts into sparks and arpeggios of lyric feeling. June 23 through Aug. 18.

PLEASURES OF PARIS FROM DAUMIER TO PICASSO, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Paris in the late 19th century was a Mecca of entertainment, from cafes and cabarets to ballet, opera and theater. This exhibition captures that effervescent era in paintings, prints and drawings by such artists as Manet, Degas, Toulouse- Lautrec and Cassatt. Through Sept. 1.

BOOKS

THE IRONY TOWER by Andrew Solomon (Knopf; $25). Glasnost brought the best of times and the worst of times to the Soviet Union's avant-garde artists. While giving them new freedoms and access to lucrative Western markets, it has destroyed the sense of community that nurtured their artistic vision and shaped their values. Solomon shares their triumphs and disappointments in this vivid, poignant and often hilarious narrative.

WOODY ALLEN by Eric Lax (Knopf; $24). Seldom is heard an embarrassing word, but this biography gets its facts straight and -- in something of a literary coup -- reaps the benefits of its subject's cooperation. Now if Woody Allen would only consent to tell this story on his own.

THEATER

A DOLL'S HOUSE. Director Ingmar Bergman gives Ibsen's landmark drama of women's liberation a poignancy and tension comparable to the best in his films by trimming the chitchat and keeping all the clashing characters onstage at all times. The Royal Dramatic Theater of Sweden's production, in Swedish with English translation via headphones, is at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week only.

THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. A Frank Loesser minifestival seems to be under way with a superb staging of this musical drama about a mail-order bride at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam and another planned at the New York City Opera, and with a revival of his Guys and Dolls that is scheduled to open on Broadway next spring.

MOVIES

BEGOTTEN. The Authentic Weirdie award goes to this nightmare classic from E. Elias Merhige. In violent chiaroscuro images, the film tells a primal story of man's birth, torture, death and rebirth. This one-of-a-kind movie (you wouldn't want there to be more than one) makes Eraserhead seem like Ernest Saves Christmas.

WHAT ABOUT BOB? John Candy usually plays the man who came to dinner and stayed too long (and ate too much), but this time Bill Murray is the nerd determined to stick to his psychiatrist like Krazy Glue. Murray and Richard Dreyfuss are terrific in Frank Oz's pretty good comedy of discomfort.

MUSIC

VIOLENT FEMMES: WHY DO BIRDS SING? (Slash/Reprise). Ornery, typically strange and downright swell. When these three tie into a song like Life Is a Scream, they make the inside of your head sing like Janet Leigh in her Psycho shower.

BEETHOVEN: THE LATE PIANO SONATAS, VOL. 1 (Dorian Recordings). Sonatas Nos. 28 and especially 29 (the "Hammerklavier") are immense in their emotional range and technical challenges. The contrapuntal writing is Olympian, the fugues exalted. Andrew Rangell possesses the intelligence and dexterity to reckon nobly with these humbling conceptions.

THE FATS WALLER PIANO SOLOS (Bluebird). There has never been a more joyous jazzman than this two-fisted stride pianist, whose artistry is brilliantly captured here.

TELEVISION

THE MAGIC FLUTE (PBS, June 19, 8 p.m. on most stations). Artist David Hockney designed this Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart, starring Kathleen Battle.

WITHOUT WARNING: THE JAMES BRADY STORY (HBO, June 20, 24). Beau Bridges brings grit and not too much sentimentality to the role of President Reagan's former press secretary, who was felled by a bullet meant for the President, and is now the symbolic leader of the nation's gun-control movement. The film's camp highlight, though, is Bryan Clark's hyperkinetic impersonation of Reagan.

ETCETERA

TEXAS FESTIVAL. A Lone Star hoedown at Washington's Kennedy Center, highlighting the Houston Ballet performing a Paul Taylor boogie set to Andrews Sisters hits. This week only.

NEW YORK CITY BALLET. Peter Martins' Ash continues his partnership with composer Michael Torke. Through June 30.

LE SAX HOT

SIDNEY BECHET: THE COMPLETE VICTOR MASTER TAKES (Bluebird). THE COMPLETE SIDNEY BECHET ON BLUE NOTE (available from Mosaic, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, Conn. 06902). Born in New Orleans in 1897, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet was one of the most talented and influential jazz musicians who ever blew a horn. As Louis Armstrong did for the trumpet, Bechet turned the soprano sax into a powerful solo voice. If Armstrong went on to achieve greater fame, Bechet had the more interesting life: affairs with Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith and Tallulah Bankhead; deportation from Britain; gunfights in Paris; and finally, ascension to the status of a national hero in France, where he died in 1959. Along the way, the hot-tempered Creole managed to record hundreds of tunes, including such classics as Summertime, Strange Fruit and Petite Fleur. These two digitally remastered sets, both of them copiously documented and illustrated, contain the bulk of his U.S. recorded work.