The American Scene; Moscow Exhibition

Good morning, this is Joel Zanger for the American Scene. Our topic this morning is the exhibit the United States held this summer in Moscow as part of a cultural exchange program. I guess this morning are two men, one who was in a way particularly responsible for the design of that exhibit, another who was fortunate enough again to be a visitor there. I'd like to introduce them to you. Our first guest is Richard E. Berenger, who is a professor in the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He's the head of the Shelter Design section. Our second is Dr. James Saf, who is a psychiatrist and a world traveler, I imagine. Dr. Saf, is it Michael Reese? I wonder if we could start. Professor Berenger, you who are responsible for the design, the great part of this particular design. What was it doing there? What were we doing with an exhibit in Moscow? Well, this was part of an exchange program that was determined several years ago, the Russian government and the United States government decided to exchange exhibits, the Russians would

exhibit in New York and the Americans would exhibit in Moscow and through this exchange that was hoped that there would be a better understanding of the people in each of the countries. This would be the original point for this to have great understanding. In terms of loosening up some of the tensions, we would, by learning more about these people, we would have a better understanding of each other, therefore, have a better possibility towards a peaceful relationship. Into the particulars, I would like to, in effect, jump to the end. Dr. Saf, you were there. You saw the Russians. Do you think it worked? How effective it was, on terms of creating an additional understanding, in terms of creating understanding. That really brings up a crucial question, which perhaps Dick can shed some light on. I really, the question is, did they believe it? My wife and I had the feeling

that at the outset, the Russians were frightened of us and frightened of the exhibit. They controlled access to the tickets, so that, at least for the first few weeks of the exhibition, as I understand it, isn't it, right? The four -minute factories were in charge of handing out tickets to Staconovites or those politically reliable, or I don't know what. But at any rate, Americans could go, and most Russians couldn't. We were besieged wherever we went, being immediately identifiable as Americans for tickets, eager people who wanted to see us, friendly people. I had the feeling from the only English language newspaper available in Moscow, in Moscow News, they put it out to Russian. They felt it was a phony, glossy, untrue, distorted picture of us. There was a squab, for instance, that

the week we left, I picked up a copy at the airport, and Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, was being done downtown. And the columnist made a point that, here's another picture of American life from what you can see at Staconovite Park, that is, Arthur Miller's play, man's having difficulty paying the installments on his house, and out at the park, the Americans are giving you what they'd like us to think. Now, in my view, I felt it was an eminently fair presentation. Well, could we go back to that? You said they didn't believe it. What was it? What did they have there? Well, did we show? We showed the theme of the exhibition was art science and technology. Was this pre -arranged, too, by the terms of the, more or less? Yes, and this was a theme which was set, at least by our State Department, whether it was by agreement with the Russians, I don't know. But at any rate, the theme was art science and technology. We elected to illustrate our technology by

showing the Russian people what is available to us on the market in the way of consumer goods. In other words, identify the fact that we have a technology because we have all of these things available to us. The science part was achieved through the use of exhibits on various kinds of research and labor relations, agricultural research, this kind of thing. And the art then was achieved through exhibitions of painting, sculpture, architecture that we had the family of man, exhibit, and the various performing arts which were performing both at the exhibit and in Moscow. The major portion of the show really amounted to consumer goods. In other words, we were showing our technology and simultaneously demonstrating our standards. That's right, demonstrating our standard of living. This is where I think you hit them where it hurts. Yes, most effective. Yes and no, I think that in a way it showed them what we have. But I didn't feel that the Russian people were

particularly envious of us for having all of these things available because they have this constant belief that they're going to have these things. They're completely convinced that someday they'll have them too and they've never had anything in the past to speak of. So they don't miss it because they really don't know what they're missing. They're better off than they were. That's for sure. But to see Russian women fingering the most ordinary pots and pans and Russian children looking at American sports equipment, I'm talking about the kind of thing that you can buy through the mail -order catalog. That's available to anybody in this country and the looks of longing and the astonishment at some of the things that we take so much for granted. I don't, I thought they were. Whistful, if not, it's not envy. There's no question of the fact that they want them, but I don't think they

feel the kind of envy that a really low -income person here would feel, for example, in going through an exhibit and knowing that everyone else in our country could have, can have these things. That's by them. You mean the fact that it's so distant that it felt that time? To them, I think that it cuts down a little bit. But we felt that we had to have a lot of things in this exhibit in order to show that these things really are available in order to give a kind of credibility. And we didn't make any effort to select things on the basis of quality of design or even quality of merchandise. In many cases, we were really trying to give a complete cross -section of the consumer goods that are available to us. Which in itself, intrinsically, in what's available to us, I think, is a kind of taste which isn't available to them, aren't you? Right. Don't you agree? The biggest problem we had in the design of the exhibition was the probability. And

I might be very interesting and I think ingenious solution to solving this problem of credibility in the exhibit was the film which Charles Ames did. We had in the exhibition three major buildings. We had a Buckminster Fuller dome which housed the science exhibits. We had a large glass pavilion which housed the consumer goods. And we had another Bucky dome in the garden which housed Cercarama. And in this large dome, where the science exhibits were, we had a series of seven screens up quite high. The screens were 60 feet by 20 feet and arranged in a group. And seven projectors, and we simultaneously projected seven films on these screens. So that in the films, the entire program ran for 10 minutes. All seven screens were full of pictures at all times,

constantly changing very much like the lights and times square. It was a very exciting thing, very well done. And these weren't synchronized into a sound thing. So that if we were talking about highway interchanges, for example, we had seven highway interchanges on the screen at the same time. And these three identified visually as being geographically. Yes, one would be snowbound and another would be in a desert, one with palm trees and so on so that you could see that these things took place all over the country. At the very least, we proved we have at least seven. Right. And then seven more. So we had 14. If we were talking about rolling mills, it was the same kind of thing. When we were talking about housing, the individual house, there would be these great developments of the small limit town kind of thing. In other words, the main problem with credibility here was that the Russians were convinced, or some Russians were convinced at least, that what you showed were

devices deliberately made just for this exposition. But they felt we were putting on the somewhere. And I think that this film helped achieve this effect. There were 3 ,500 bits of information that were disseminated within this 10 minute period by this film. So credibility would have to eradicate it just by map. Right. Oh, everything was just keep throwing things at these little pieces of information at the people. And so that you had seven interchanges. At one point, seven Maryland Monroe's, which I thought was very interesting because when it came to Hollywood and came to Maryland Monroe, there were seven wonderful shots of her doing a little tassel bit. That would probably sell here. But this was this I thought was very a very ingenious system of. You had contact. I know you built it. You were there doing a setting up of this. Two and a half months. And you told me that you had made some contact

with Russian workers, that you had Russian laborers. Right. And did you could any of them speak English? Did you have any feeling of what their ideas had shared? We had plenty of people to act as interpreters for us, both Americans and Russians. We use the American interpreters most of the time because the Russian interpreters, some of them didn't speak English as well. And the problem of getting a message across became a little more difficult with them. But we had plenty of opportunity to talk to them. They wanted to talk to us. As a matter of fact, many times the problem was not to talk to them. In order to get some work to work. Because they wanted to sit and ask us about the United States. They were very curious about this country. They asked good and bad questions. They feel that the American people are friendly people. They suspect this. We tried to prove it to them. They feel that they're friendly people. And that there is no reason why these two groups of friendly people

can't live in some kind of relationship with each other. Over and over, those people we met in dining rooms or hotels, wanted to. They were terribly nice and generous to us. And wanted assurances of peace, but had this picture of us as kind of upstairs someplace that somebody controlling our doings. Well, they naturally get things away. They started a picture of us as we get to them. I think that certainly our picture is just as distorted as theirs is. I'd like to go back to something earlier. You spoke of the charges of distortion, the false picture. These were official charges. I mean, in the sense that they were printed. They were printed. Then somebody is controlling one. Would they reflect it in the comments of the individual Russians you met? Did they also feel the kind of distortion? No. I think that the Russian people, themselves, those who saw the exhibit, actually believed what they saw. Because there's no reason for them not to.

The press had to find some way of not glorifying the United States, because after all, they've been building up this picture of us for a long time, and to suddenly turn tail and say that where marvelous place would be kind of incongruous for them. Dick not just that, but you know, one of the things I was impressed with was that your exhibition was amicable. It was peaceful. There was no biceps flexing. No. No hardware. And that too, I think. Well, I think we did affect it. We tried two things. We didn't try to shout that we are a this is the way we live. These are the things that we use in our life. This is the kind of research we're doing. And this is the kind of art we produced. But essentially the picture you gave was a

picture of middle -class America. A picture of a lot of construction. A woman being made up publicly, a circular booth with hundreds of Russian women watching what's a routine business in our country, if somebody putting on lipstick, in which is anything but a routine there. And certainly not to find that here is a middle -class activity. But we didn't show, for example, slums, I imagine. We showed some urban redevelopment projects. We did have before and after pictures. Obviously, we're not going to we didn't see any point in displaying slums. But we tried to show what we were doing to to get rid of slums. We had a section of the exhibit on race relations. And we tried to show how we are attacking the problem of race relations. We didn't say we've solved it. We didn't say we've gotten rid of slums. But we did say that we are working on these problems.

Well, these are questions that interested the Russian who came in, or were they more concerned with the lipstick, perhaps, applications? I think in the exhibit, they were more concerned with the actual things that were to be seen. They were most interested in the automobiles. I suppose this would be true most anywhere. But the automobile portion of the show, we had 28 cars. Every major model of all the manufacturers was on exhibit in the garden. We'll see them next year there. Yes. How do you mean? Since their cars are one thing, these are about ten years behind in the Moscow Strait when sees what you think are Cadillac's and Packards from ten years ago. That's right. They're very derivative in their design. The thing that this was an interesting thing. I'd talk to a number of Russian people who have responsible jobs in the government and who have opportunities to see things that the ordinary public doesn't see. Their criticism was that we didn't show anything new in the

exhibit. After all, they have a museum in Moscow which has every one of the items that we had in our exhibit in it already. This is a museum which is available to their designers and manufacturers so that as someone decides to produce something in the way of consumer goods, they can go to this museum. They can find whatever they consider the best and copy it. They have no feelings about how do they turn out? I don't mean artistically, but technically. Yes. Well, at the moment, they aren't up to the kind of standard that we're producing. Your floor crumbled, I know. Well, this was a totally different thing here. They're not copying anything. They just don't have the technology to build and to produce the kind of a system that we ask for. Not a reason to materialize labor. Both. Actually, an experience too. Because we ask for concrete floor in these buildings, thinking that this would be the least expensive

flooring that we could have. Normally, in this country, we pour a good grade of concrete. We have an exhibition floor. But it seems that the Russians never use concrete as a finished floor. They always cover it with ceramic tile, or some other kind of tile, or taratso, or something. You discovered why. We found out why. They just didn't know how to do the kind of a floor we had. They were very musing in a way because they insist on doing things the hard way sometimes. If it's harder to do it with a machine, and easier to do it by hand, they'll do it with the machine. If they own the machine. If it's their machine, and they can demonstrate to us that they're really a machine society. The process they were using for the floor was a system of pumping the concrete through great tubes to the spot where it was going to be poured. They began the first day by mixing their concrete, which was a good grade of cement, a proper amount of sand and cement and water.

As they pumped it through the tubes, it just clogged the tubes. The tubes would break and concrete would go all over the building. Then they would have to take all the tubes apart and bang them in order to get all the concrete out. Finally, they kept making the mixture a little wetter and wetter until it was about the consistency of split pea soup. The dry concrete floor would just suck all the moisture out of this. This was what they were leaving us as a concrete floor. Simply because they had such huge areas and they felt that they had to do this mechanically, and we didn't have the time to wait for them to do it right. As a result, they had a floor which had no hardness to it at all. The best description of this floor was made by a question that a girl asked me once. She was sweeping the floor and she said, if I keep on sweeping, will I sweep away the floor? This is

the best way I can describe this thing. So, at the last day, after the exhibit opened, we had to come in and put down asphalt. One question. We've been pretty much confining the discussion to the criticism and response of the technology section. Now, I assume that the charges of distortion were primarily aimed at this display rather than the art display, let's say, or the science display. The charges against the art display were charges of decadence and this kind of thing. They really felt that our art display was something they couldn't understand and that this was a science show. We had, I think, one of the finest collections of American painting that's ever been put together. We had a very responsible jury appointed by the government to select these things and we had every one of our major contemporary painters represented. We had there were representational work, a certain amount of it, but only the best and it went all the way from representational to complete non -objective painting.

This was a marvelous thing, I think, for us to have done, because it was the first time that Russian painters have ever had an opportunity to see anything in the way of modern painting. Dr. Saft, some of your acquaintances in Russia were interested in painting, as collectors. No, I think Dix. I was in France when it was something about this. The amusing thing to me, I visited the home of, again, a fairly responsible person in the government who collects paintings and I find it very amusing to see that on the walls facing the windows that could be seen from the street, he had the acceptable social realism painting that takes place in Russia. On the walls, could you describe it in a way that the social

realism painting? Social realism painting is a painting which tells the story. It's allegorical, you know, in a sense. Let me describe what I think was the epitome, which is the kind of art we saw in the Tretchenkoff Gallery, where Russian art is displayed, and incredibly bad. And it's a... That's why you mean technically bad as well as... Technically bad, artistically bad, in my view at least. The kind of, the young fellow of a botanine with a, he's a young pioneer with a red knacker chiff. Looks like a boy's got, and he's sitting around a table in the basement of the building, and it depicts the young communist league or whatever his organization is called, or young pioneers, and he's engaged in some kind of social interaction, and this, the message of the story is, it's good to do this, and it's, it wouldn't make the cover of the Saturday evening post, so that... It's very like that kind of thing. It tends to be, but not, but not, with, not of a selector seat. Right.

Doesn't even have that technically good quality. There are, is what I saw at least, sad. The point I wanted to make though was that on the window wall, which could not be seen from the street, he had abstract paintings, which he had bought under the counter. Well, these European abstract paintings... These Russian abstract painters. They're up painters and doing the Russian painters who were, who were doing abstractions, who were working in the modern idioms. They're not in the museums. But they are, they will not be found in the museums. They normally don't even sign their paintings because they are afraid of having the wrong people find out that they're doing this kind of painting, but it's amusing to me that people are buying them, but they're just enough afraid of hanging them, that they hang them in the portion of the apartment, which cannot be seen from the street. The people they trust can see them, the people they do not trust see that they have social realism in their collection. What about the response of the crowd themselves? What do they look at? Do they go directly to the

representational things? We actually, for a great part of the time, we had to close the painting exhibit because of the mobs were so... You couldn't fight your way in. You could not fight your way into that. Oh, that's true. They were in shows too. What was the attitude? They would have to close the watchers. I think they had a total of less negative than in this country to us. It was more of curiosity, for instance. It was an attitude of curiosity. They wanted to know why these people were painting the way they were painting and what these things represented. I think you hear over and over a question, which is, what does it say? It's asked in with real interest. Well, this question actually formulated in terms of social realism painting. But it's not a negative. I can't stand it judgment at least. We saw a go -gan in the hermitage upstairs. They have a collection of paintings up until 1918. And our guide, when we exclaimed about it, I've never seen it before or a picture of it, said,

but why do you like it? What's the message? Well, that's a question that you might ask here. It's not at least an angry question. They didn't reject it. They were simply curious about it. And I think that Edith Helpert, who was Edith Helpert? She's the lady who ran the exhibit. She's mined his own business when he expressed criticisms of the exhibition. She also refused to hang his painting in the exhibit. I thought it was quite interesting. He very generously donated a painting, which wound up being hung in the director's office at the exhibit, yes. The director being a Russian? No, the American director of the executive party. Yes, to a certain extent. But she took a very strong stand on the painting.

She went there. She speaks Russian. She went to Moscow at her own expense to be with this exhibit. And she worked very hard at explaining to the Russian people and to the Russian painters, because she spent a great deal of time with the young painters. The Russian painters then came. They came and they brought their work for her to see. They would visit her at her hotel room and bring their work so that she could see what they were doing. And she was quite impressed with the strength of the movement towards contemporary painting among the young painters. Did you have any opportunity, Dr. Saf, to see Russian art under the table eye? No, not bad. And I was delighted to hear what Dick told me that they were doing this kind of thing. At a no time was public enough for you to see. Not as a tourist, in fact. Which goes to show that the picture that the tourist gets isn't the whole story, and that there are segments

pleased with us and with interested in the way we are doing things and wanting to learn from us and to share what they're doing with us. You saw the crowds there. Do you think they learned from us? I think they were impressed by us and they understand us better for this exhibit. I can't answer that question, I don't know. Or let's put another way, is the goal of understanding to be achieved by, do you think by looking at a continued interchange of this sort? I think we made friends this song, I think. Well, I suppose that in itself is an adequate goal. This is a step in that direction. This is not the solution to gaining this complete understanding we're looking for. Well, that's where they're going to help. I'd like to thank you both, Professor Beranger, to Safd, and hope that if we do this show again in Moscow, while I'm sure you'll both be involved with one degree or another. Thank you. This is Joel's Beranger, for the American Scene. Good morning.