Step Right Up to the Great Culture-Kultura Bazaar

By Gerald Clarke

Vladimir Horowitz has been there, filling the halls in Moscow and Leningrad with his Olympian mastery of the piano. Coming here this week--first to Washington, then to Los Angeles and New York City--will be some of the most beautiful sights earth-bound folk are ever likely to see: paintings by, among others, Cezanne, Matisse, Monet and Renoir. "Matisse is one of the giants of the 20th century," says J. Carter Brown, director of Washington's National Gallery. "But many of his early works have been locked up in the Soviet Union.[*] No other single Matisse is as wonderful as The Red Room [formally titled Harmony in Red], and it will be seen here for the first time!"

The Geneva summit meeting of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev last November made little progress on the major issues dividing East and West. But to lovers of the arts it was a signal success: it brought about the first U.S.-Soviet cultural-exchange agreement since 1973 and made possible the trips of Horowitz, the paintings from Soviet museums and many other performances and art exhibits.

Indeed, the exchanges, which had ended more than six years ago with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, resumed almost immediately. Rag Dolly, a children's play produced by the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts in Albany, won high praise when it visited Moscow in January. Now there is talk that Producer David Merrick will dispatch a production for grownups, his Broadway hit 42nd Street. Soviet Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko was recently in the U.S., talking to such moviemakers as Francis Ford Coppola and Warren Beatty about trading films. "Soviet audiences don't know contemporary American cinema," he says, "and Soviet films are not seen in America except in special cinema clubs and art theaters." Meanwhile, the Ganelin Trio, an avant-garde Soviet jazz group--yes, Soviet jazz!--is scheduled to tour 14 American cities in June and July. The Moiseyev folk dancers will probably appear at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House in September, and the Bolshoi Ballet will arrive in the U.S. next year.

It is hard to exaggerate the excitement the agreement has generated in the cultural circles of both superpowers. American balletomanes are eagerly examining the schedule of Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, which has not danced in the U.S. in 22 years, scanning cast lists and hoping for a glimpse of Altynai Assylmuratova, its much touted 24-year-old ballerina. "The Bolshoi is better known over here and has a more flamboyant style," says Jane Hermann, director of presentations for the Metropolitan Opera. "But absence has made the Kirov almost mysterious. People want to see where a Baryshnikov and a Nureyev came from."

The Soviets seem no less impatient to watch America strut its stuff. "They have always had an enormous interest in Americana, especially in black music, jazz and avant-garde theater," says Samuel Niefeld, vice president of Columbia Artists Management, one of the leading classical-music agencies in the U.S. "They use them as examples of the decadence of our nation, but they're totally mesmerized by them."

Dealings between the superpowers, no matter how innocent, can never be separated from politics, and it would be naive to assume that this agreement will enable Soviet and American artists to pirouette around all political confrontations. Moscow, for instance, shut the door to a Hello, Dolly! troupe after the American bombing of North Viet Nam and kept the Bolshoi Ballet at home after the 1967 Middle East war. Washington retaliated in similar ways after the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Canceling a ballet tour or an orchestra performance is an easy way for both countries to show displeasure, but American diplomats are hopeful that this time around the ballerinas and the piano players will not be pawns in the game between East and West. Both capitals appear committed to make this exchange agreement work, and there is no sign so far of any shift because of the U.S. bombing of Libya two weeks ago.

Far from being an afterthought of the summit, as it seemed to many at the time, it was in fact carefully thought out, the result of 15 months of tough negotiations and 65 meetings in Moscow. On the U.S. side, President Reagan, that old-time actor, was a firm supporter of an accord that he said would create "genuine constituencies for peace." On the Soviet side, there has been what one State Department official terms "a marked change in attitude. They have taken an active, positive role. There is an altogether different attitude." Hermann also detects their keen desire to make the exchange agreement work. "They're bending over backwards," she says.

Within hours after the agreement was signed Nov. 21, American impresarios and museum directors were lining up for their share of cultural caviar. Robert Fitzpatrick, who is arranging Los Angeles' 1987 Arts Festival--which will be much like the one he set up for the 1984 Olympics--was already in Moscow. "I wanted to be the first in the door," he says. Fitzpatrick, whose taste runs to artistic frontiers, immediately placed a bid for the innovative Rustaveli Theater from the Georgian city of Tbilisi. "It's been a generation or two since we've seen any Soviet theater in this country," he says.

Fitzpatrick may have wanted to be first in the door, but Armand Hammer, 87, chairman of Occidental Petroleum and a promoter of Soviet-American relations for more than 60 years, was already inside the room. Several years ago, Hammer had seen a Soviet exhibition of impressionist and postimpressionist paintings in Switzerland. He asked the Minister of Culture if he could borrow it for the U.S. too, but nothing happened until after the summit agreement. Under a deal Hammer and Carter Brown worked out, the National Gallery has already sent 40 impressionist paintings to the U.S.S.R. (Hammer also has loaned the Soviets 127 paintings from his own collection, which includes many old masters.) In return, the Hermitage and Pushkin museums have sent the 41 paintings that are now in Washington.

Not far behind Hammer and Fitzpatrick came a parade of other Americans, hoping to sign up everything from the Bolshoi Ballet to dancing bears--so long as they growled in Russian. "Neither the American nor the Soviet government was prepared for the onslaught of interest," says Hermann. "Everyone with two nickels to rub together wants to be the next Sol Hurok." Many of those would-be impresarios may be disappointed, however, and it is harder to make a profit from touring companies today. Says Lee Lament, president of ICM Artists, which once presented many of the Soviet troupes: "With the rising cost of travel, hotels and union help, you just can't make the profit of 25 years ago."

The pace has been so rapid that schedules of major groups, which are usually established long in advance, have been altered and expanded almost overnight. The Kirov, for example, had already been scheduled to perform at Vancouver's Expo 86 this month. When the good news arrived from Geneva, the company was able to add Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Wolf Trap in Virginia to its schedule. Unfortunately, the appropriate houses in Manhattan--dance capital of the world--were unavailable on such short notice, and New York dance lovers will have to put on their traveling shoes to see a company that helped define classical ballet. Philadelphians are unfortunate too in that they will see the Kirov in the cavernous Mann Music Center. "The Mann Center is a disaster," says Nureyev, who frets that his old company may not be seen to the best advantage. "I once danced there, and a little plane could take off and land inside the auditorium."

After the excitement dies down, the cultural exchanges--so everyone hopes--will become routine. American audiences will doubtless give standing ovations to major Soviet troupes. "The Bolshoi Ballet will sell out as long as the world turns," says Niefeld. Cognoscenti hope that future visits will also bring such top performers as Pianist Sviatoslav Richter, Saxophonist Alexei Kozlov, Mezzo-Soprano Elena Obraztsova, and even Pianist Vladimir Feltsman, whose career was halted by Soviet authorities in 1979 when he applied for permission to emigrate to Israel.

American audiences may find a few disappointments. "Many of their famous classical music artists are dead or have already come to the West," Niefeld says. "By and large, the talent that's left over there is of less consequence than before. It isn't like 20 years ago, when the Soviets had a pantheon of world performers you couldn't find anywhere else."

At first, anyway, Soviet audiences and museumgoers will probably be shown only the most traditional aspects of American culture, such as its major orchestras and Broadway musicals. If history is any judge, ordinary Soviets, who tend to be more conservative than their American counterparts, may not like much new American art. Until lately, in fact, few Soviets considered abstract art to be art at all. One of the exhibits Soviet officials have approved, interestingly, is a selection from three generations of the Wyeth family, whose work is solid and representational.

Whatever problems arise, however, there are assured benefits, maybe even some political gains. "I don't think we can resolve all our differences through cultural exchanges," says Yevtushenko, "but we can create a special atmosphere of trust. And this will make it easier to sign political and nuclear agreements." If that is perhaps too hopeful, the pleasure and enrichment for American and Soviet audiences is enough in itself. And the exchanges should help to make the two superpowers less disagreeable when they choose to disagree. --By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York and William Stewart/Washington

[*] These treasures were assembled for the most part by two pre-Revolutionary collectors of remarkable prescience, Sergei Shchukin, a tea and grain merchant, and Ivan Morozov, a cotton merchant. Both collections were expropriated when the Bolsheviks took power.

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/New York, William Stewart/Washington