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The Ransom Of Russian Art
Absent-minded professor funnels a fortune in Russian art out of the USSR
For fans of John McPhee, this short work, The Ransom of Russian Art, follows the authors’ method of telling a story through the eyes of one or more main characters. In this work, the character is Norton Townshend Dodge. This absent-minded professor of economics holds true, too, to McPhee’s knack of celebrating memorable and somewhat eccentric people.
Of Dodge, McPhee writes the following. "In this country, Norton Dodge was (and still is) looked upon by his doting friends as a person who has difficulty getting from A to C without stumbling over D and forgetting B." Dodge had acquired his doctorate in economics from Harvard University writing a "nine hundred page monograph on soviet tractors."
During his studies at the Russian Research Center at Harvard, Dodge "had known a graduate student who had studied economics at Moscow University and had shared living quarters there with a Russian artist." The artist Valery Kuznetsov had become disenchanted with sanctioned artistic expression in the Soviet Union of the 1960s and went underground to join a large community of "unofficial artists."
McPhee profiles Dodge and his many visits to the USSR over the course of two decades. During these visits the book recounts the many elaborate ruses that the professor engineered to spirit away some of the most valuable painting being produced right under the noses of the communist dictatorship.
Dodge remained secretive about how he managed to move the artwork out of Russia to his farm, Cremona Farm, along the Patuxent River in Southern Maryland. But, McPhee manages to extract the implication that the CIA was helpful in moving the larger pieces of art through their own network. For many of the smaller pieces, Dodge apparently rolled the art up with official soviet posters and carried them with him as he left the country.
Just how much did Dodge spend on his collection of painting? McPhee writes. "But over the years, as he developed ways of getting this sent to him, he increased his outlay to ‘several millions of dollars.’" The author, himself shocked at the amount of money invested learned quickly that the economics professor had a knack for making money by making smart investments that grew rapidly over time.
While the book does follow Dodge on his acquisitive forays, it also spends time on the artist that Dodge befriended. "In the nineteen-seventies, in Leningrad, Dodge met Evgeny Rukhin, a key figure in the dissident movement… He spoke English, French, and German; and that gave, in the words of a colleague, ‘gave him a form of power.’ He was nearly two metres tall. Under his head of dark hair—its rolling curls spreading out in great radius—his beard, brown and red, broadly fell halfway down his chest…" For his activities as a dissident Rukhin, his apartment was set ablaze and he died in the inferno. He was thirty-two years old.
The Ransom of Russian Art is filled with color reproductions of the art that Dodge has collected. Besides the many prints of Rukhin’s work are reproductions of artists such as Galina Popova, Vladas Zilius, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Igor Tiulpanov, Tonis Vint, and many others.
The book is a combination of biography, historical narrative on Russian "unofficial art," and adventure story. It will entertain and educate at the same time.
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