Diplomatic Tiff Painted Over; Portraits Go Up
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MOSCOW — The Soviets agreed to let George Rodrigue hang his paintings of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday, but the artist says they won’t be there long.
“I’m leaving Wednesday,” said Rodrigue, who is from Lafayette, La., “and taking them back home.”
Soviet officials ordered the paintings taken down Friday, two days after they were placed in a restaurant at Moscow’s World Trade Center.
David Young, Rodrigue’s press agent, said the Soviets apparently thought the oil painting of Reagan--dressed in Western-style clothing and mounted on a white horse--was embarrassing to the President.
Young said he explained to Sergei B. Volokhov, a Soviet trade center official, that Reagan had seen the painting last year and seemed to like it.
The Soviets also apparently got the OK to re-hang the painting of Gorbachev, which shows him carrying a banner.
The paintings are in a Cajun restaurant that is being run during the summit by John Folse, a Louisiana chef and a friend of Rodrigue.
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