UPTOWN

JOHN HELIKER--Kraushaar, 1055 Madison Ave. at 80th. In Interior, Heliker lays color on color as if cleaning up his palette, elicits a surprisingly subtle suggestion of a chair. In Rocks and Trees, Maine, the Columbia University painting prof stacks up icy whites and blues like cubes, captures the cold beauty of the rocky coast. In Still Life with Bowl of Fruit, dusty rose and orange tumble from his brush to make one of the most pleasing works in the show. Also some fine drawings. Through May 23.

LEONARD BASKIN--Borgenicht, 1018 Madison Ave. at 78th. More of his men, birds and birdmen, but if Raskin's themes remain unchanged, his treatment is always fresh. Few artists break up space so imaginatively, or trap the animal lurking in humans with more cunning. Some of the 22 drawings are eight feet high. At AFI, 1067 Madison Ave. at 80th: four illustrations for the Yiddish edition of The Old Man and the Sea. Both through May 29.

THE EDUCATED EYE--Perls, 1016 Madison Ave. at 78th. Paintings and sculptures from the private collections of alumni and parents of the Dalton School, lent to benefit the alma mater. They include Cezanne's Under the Trees, Klee's Landscape with Signs, Picasso's witty Nude and Woman Washing her Feet, Hofmann's The Conjurer (a painter mid his pots), Calder's 1963 mobile, Yellow Flower. Through May 23.

OLD MASTERS--Silberman, 1014 Madison Ave. at 78th. Another benefit, this time for the Rudolf Steiner School, shows some of the little-known but distinctive pieces owned by the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Md. Paintings by Old Masters Pellegrini and Veronese and works attributed to Caravaggio, Titian, Campagnola and Rembrandt are on loan. Through May 27.

BORIS MARGO--World House, 987 Madison Ave. at 77th. In Memoriam, one of Margo's "sculptured canvases," is a tall (eight-foot) tribute to President Kennedy. On canvas stretched over wood, the artist traced an elaborate calligraphy with sand. At first it seems to be Sanskrit, but on study English words emerge. Other pieces, of varying shape and material, employ other languages. Through June 6.

ROBERT INDIANA--Stable, 33 East 74th. Like the young visionary Hart Crane, who saw the Brooklyn Bridge from his window 40 years ago and hymned it in verse, Robert Indiana, painter of the American Dream, sees the bridge every day from his studio. In homage to the poet he committed it to canvas in a four-faceted diamond filled with silver, singing girders. It is part of Indiana's American-dream theme, as are his Mother and Father Diptych showing his parents stepping into a Model T and his word columns-salvaged sailing-ship masts covered with typical Indiana "dream" words Eat, Hug, Love, Err, Die. Through May 30.

GREGORIO PRESTOPINO--Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th. As a painter, Prestopino carries no excess baggage: he carves clean chunks of landscape from pastry-rich impasto, props blunt black boulders and fallen trees around like sentries, guides the eye to figures of feverish hue--orange, red, pink, green--wading in lily ponds and squatting in lakes. Recent oils. Through May 30.

MARGO HOFF--Banfer, 23 East 67th. She composes her collage paintings by layering tissue and rice paper on oil and canvas, adds effects with pencil, pastel, ink or charcoal. Her colors glow, but the works come to life when the artist introduces scraps of paper such as wedding confetti, wine labels and ticket stubs. Also on view are eight little wooden boxes. Through May 23.

MIDTOWN

PETER LANYON--Viviano, 42 East 57th. "If you go to St. Ives you will notice the blue," says Lanyon of his English birthplace and home, and if you go to see his paintings you will too. Lanyon likes to float low in his glider, a vantage point that wins him curious perspectives: Lake looks like a rubber life raft filled with water, North East seems to offer a view right through a terrace table, and Spring Coast is a maze of curves and curlicues in phosphorescent green and fresh red. Through May 23.

CONSAGRA AND FRIENDS--Odyssia, 41 East 57th. Five contemporary Italians wear the mantle of their rich sculptural heritage with distinction. Pietro Consagra, winner of the 1960 Venice Biennale's International Sculpture Award, carves "colloquies" in slabs of stainless steel and wood. Alberto Viani smoothes sweeping surfaces to an Arp-like elegance. Quinto Ghermandi coaxes bronze until it is as fragile as a leaf. Francesco Somaini, Best Foreign Sculptor in Sao Paulo's 1959 Bienal. makes magnificent metal meteorites both rugged and grand. Leoncillo bakes gres (a clay mixture) until his solder-colored shapes look as if they sprung from lava. Through June 6.

PAUL REYBEROLLE--Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th. The U.S. gets its first good look at a French painter who serves up frogs, couples and countrysides. As if performing a fertility rite in the paint itself, Reyberolle stirs around a mess of goopy green to convey the spume and spawn of swamp life and, with a calculated confusion of limbs, portrays lovers tumbling in a field, successfully suggests the mystery and fecundity of nature. Thirty oils. Through June 9.

JAMES METCALF--Loeb, 12 East 57th. The polished brass sculptures of an American in Paris all have secrets, none of which will be told here, for the fun of walking around Metcalf's pieces is the surprise of revelation. In his second one-man show in New York he proves to be a sculptor with an extraordinary imagination, honed, perhaps, by considerable contact with the surrealists. Through June 13.

GEORGE TOOKER--Durlacher, 538 Madison Ave. at 54th. His egg temperas send a warm glow across the room. The viewer enters and meets death peeping over a fresh young maiden's shoulder. From then on he is surrounded by staring figures whose eyes are gutted candles, whose moonfaces are masks--fugitives from feeling and separated by silence. Through May 23.

AMERICAN PRINTS IN RUSSIA--Associated American Artists, 605 Fifth Ave. at 49th. The U.S. Information Agency's graphic arts exhibition so wowed the Russians (1,600,000 saw it in seven months) that 23 prints were added when it reached Moscow. Those prints are on display here. Some of the artists: Warrington Colescott, Dean Meeker, Harold Altman, Mel Silverman. Through June 5.

HAITIAN PRIMITIVES-Art D'Haiti, 49 Grove St. near Sheridan Square. The small gallery is crowded with landscapes and figures in dark-bright colors and voluptuous lines that depict the rituals of Haitian life and evoke the mystery, romance and anguish of the enchanting little Creole country. Thirty works by 27 of Haiti's leading primitive painters, including Philome and Seneque Obin, Andre Pierre, Pauleus Vital, Hector Hyppolite. Through May 29.

MUSEUMS & SCHOOLS

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY--Gould Student Center, University Ave. at 181st. What makes the long haul up to The Bronx worthwhile is the New York debut of a young and promising painter who infuses her abstractions with vitality. Tamara Thompson, 29, has structural poise and color sensitivity, sturdy values that serve many moods. October Painting summons the warm chill of a fall day. American Eagle is a glossy salute in red, white, blue and--lavender. Works in oil, gouache, Liquitex. Through May 31.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY--Low Memorial Library, Broadway at 116th. A collection of Chinese art objects--ceramics, bronzes, jades and sculptures--is dominated by a half-ton Buddha head in stone, described by Art History Professor Jane G. Mahler as "one of the most important pieces ever to come out of China." Through June 2.

JEWISH--Fifth Ave. at 92nd. Fifty of Arshile Gorky's drawings span his career. Through June 30. An archaeological exhibition of 200 sculptures and artifacts goes back to the sixth millennium B.C. Through Sept. 6.

GUGGENHEIM--Fifth Ave. at 89th. Frank Lloyd Wright's curvilinear museum makes a fitting setting for the "endlessness" of Architect-Sculptor Frederick Kiesler, who turns a room into a work of art, links painted and sculpted units to form a labyrinth of surprises. In the main gallery is the 120-work Van Gogh collection lent by the painter's nephew. Both exhibitions through June 28.

METROPOLITAN--Fifth Ave. at 82nd. Something for everyone: Rembrandt's paintings and prints; Raphael's long-lost drawing of Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist; Wedgwood's revolutionary creamware; English jugs transfer-printed with American heroes and history; the architectural fantasies of previous world's fairs; Dutch, Flemish and French paintings.

FRICK COLLECTION--Fifth Ave. at 70th. William Blake, faithful to his own visions, could also be true to another's. In 28 watercolors illustrating Pilgrim's Progress, he yielded to the imagination of the writer, drew Bunyan's familiar figures more literally than was his wont, but also less lyrically. Also a drawing done for Milton's Paradise Regained. Through May 24.

GALLERY OF MODERN ART--Columbus Circle at 59th. Upstaging each other: Russian-born Painter Pavel Tchelitchew (through May 24), Pre-Raphaelites, and Sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (50 works). Through May 31.

BROOKLYN--Eastern Parkway. A major exhibition of Joseph Mallord William Turner's watercolors lent by the British Museum. Through May 31.

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