The ''Helga Pictures'' are only being promoted. The National Gallery is making the case for the work, but is not confronting the hard issues it raises. What is particularly troubling is not so much that major American museums are eager to jump on the bandwagon and take a show that will keep their turnstyles pumping, but that there appears to be an abnegation of curatorial responsibility. What is more disturbing than the work is the amount of attention this hymn to provincial life has received and the degree to which the public continues to be captivated by its song: the catalogue is the first art book to be chosen as a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and although the publishing date was May 19, it is already in its third printing. They preach pragmatism, self-reliance and forthrightness, but are anything but resolved and whole. They are obsessed with detail, but they are not curious. They involve meticulous observation, but they are not observant. Wyeth's work, however, ''The Helga Pictures'' are not what they seem. Wyeth the plainness and vitality of the land.
The muse is Helga Testorf, a German immigrant who embodies for Mr. The setting is Chadds Ford, Pa., with its ruddy earth, puritan architecture and cold light. Gottlieb approached the National Gallery, which agreed to do a show, for which the book is the catalogue. Abrams publishing house, who decided to publish a book. Andrews approached Paul Gottlieb, the president of the Harry A. Andrews, who acquired the series in March 1986 for what he described as ''multimillions of dollars.'' Mr.
Other than his wife Betsy, the first person to see them was the collector Leonard E.
They are highly personal works, done over a 15-year period, and the artist kept them a secret until the year he completed them, 1985. Yes, these are the Helga pictures, the ones that created such a fuss when they were made public last summer. Wyeth is what he has always been -a sometimes admirable, sometimes moving, invariably problematical figure whose work reflects the principles and problems of American provincial life. In this suite of works, which amounts to around 15 to 20 percent of the artist's output during the last 15 years, Mr. Andrew Wyeth's ''Helga Pictures,'' which begin their two-and-a-half-year, six-stop national run today at the National Gallery of Art, are not that disturbing in themselves.
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