He dominates a conversation with ease. And quoting him is like quoting a zealot. I ask him about a particularly large canvas that dominates his apartment, one in which an intense area of golds and yellows is crowded by and masked over by a darker shroud of black and shadowy reds. One of the results of the Russian shakedown is a plague of art crimes. Two museums are being hit a month.
Art is one of the few stable, hard currencies left over there.
I ask him if he thinks the recent recall of the traveling Republic of Georgia exhibit has something to do with this problem. Crime wasn't the issue. It's Shevardnadze vs. the Zviadists. Politics in the guise of an ethnic trend. I mean the secularization of ethnic materialism is fine.