Help


from Brown Corpus
« »  
Typical of such an experience was the occasion of a somewhat formal official welcome in the offices of the Union of Soviet Artists.
We had looked forward to what we hoped to be our first informal meeting with a number of Moscow's artists.
Instead, we became involved in a series of friendly, but overly formal, welcoming addresses to which we had no choice but to reply in kind.
The terms of friendship, understanding, cooperation, etc., tend to become somewhat shopworn because of constant and indiscriminate use.
I can only hope that the continuing exchange of groups and individuals between our countries will not wear out all language pertinent to the occasion.
The presiding female functionary, of massive proportions and forbidding appearance, initially did not contribute to the expressions of friendship and welcome by a number of dignified gentlemen representing the arts.
It was only after we had responded, with what I fear were similar cliches, that she went into action by questioning our desire for friendship and understanding with a challenge about aggressive and warlike actions by the U.S. Government in Cuba and Laos.
She retreated by leaving the room when we suggested that our meeting might well terminate right then and there.
Unfortunately she returned later, just as I had taken advantage of the friendlier atmosphere in the room by stating that perhaps an unexpected result of the Cultural Exchange Program would be the re-emergence of Abstract Art in Russia, with Social Realism regaining dominance in the U.S..
This gave her an opportunity to ring down the curtain with the petulant admonition that we should not presume to lecture her on Abstraction.
She did not go so far as to say, as was done on other occasions, that Abstraction as well as Impressionism were a Russian invention that had been discarded as unwanted by the people of the U.S.S.R.

1.905 seconds.