AND THERE'S THE ART OF DIPLOMACY

Author: By Adam Pertman, Globe Staff

Date: Thursday, October 24, 1985
Page: 3
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN

He also wants to make it clear to Speakes that he thinks casually substituting one Italian name for another in a wisecrack can be offensive rather than funny.

"His statement confusing the life cycle hypothesis of saving with alluring nudes in the Sistine Chapel has me seriously worried," Modigliani, an MIT professor who won this year's Nobel Prize in economics for his work in the field of savings, said in a telephone interview yesterday. While he said the spokesman had probably just been trying to avoid a touchy question with a clever one-liner, he added that "the joke did have an ethnic connotation" and amounted to "an ignorant slur."

Speakes made the statement that unleashed Modigliani's fury, and wit, on Monday, in response to a reporter asking if he had any reaction to the economist's criticism earlier that day of budget-balancing legislation supported by President Reagan.

"Got nothing," Speakes replied. "I thought he was the fellow that painted the Sistine Chapel."

Speakes, who was at the United Nations with Reagan yesterday, said he was ''only being facetious" in his remarks. He added that he was offended by Modigliani's suggestion that they constituted an ethnic slur.

In Washington, another White House spokesman, Albert Brashear, said no offense had been intended by the joke "and we're certainly sorry if it was taken that way."

The quip, he said, was an attempt at "self-deprecating" humor by deliberately confusing the names of two artists.

Earlier in the day, the MIT economics professor said Speakes' switch of the
artists' names was, in fact, the point.

"I'm not concerned so much by the abysmal ignorance which led him to mix together two great painters, four centuries apart - Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) - who have nothing in common except that, like me, they were born in Italy," said Modigliani. "What worries me is that he obviously does not read any newspaper, which, for the White House spokesman, is quite remarkable."

Modigliani is reported to have felt slighted because Reagan did not make a call to congratulate him on his prize, but he did not comment on that during yesterday's interview. Instead, he concentrated on tossing wry barbs at Speakes.

Particularly interesting, he said, was the fact that about two hours before Speakes spoke Monday, the White House had called Modigliani's Cambridge office, inviting him to Washington next Wednesday to advise Reagan on trade policy. (He accepted.)

"Was Speakes kept in the dark, or is my secretary wrong, and the president really wants to talk with me about the Sistine Chapel?" Modigliani asked rhetorically during yesterday's interview. "I hope I'll get an answer soon."

Speakes has received criticism similar to Modigliani's in the past, most recently from Italian-Americans who said they were offended by his reference to "EYE-talians" when discussing the hijacking of a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists.

Speakes was also called to task last year for mispronouncing the name of Martin Feldstein, then head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

Joining in yesterday's criticism of Speakes was Rep. Chester Atkins (D- Mass.), who sent a letter to the spokesman saying his remarks were ''totally inappropriate and sadly uninformed."

While most of his points were the same as Modigliani's, Atkins also used the occasion to take a bit of a partisan shot.

"I guess it isn't surprising," he wrote, "that an administration that missed its target for balancing the budget by $200 billion could confuse two painters who were separated by just four centuries."

pertma;10/23,18:15 CORCOR;10/24,17:53 MODIGL24