Bête Comme Un Peintre
David Schoffman draws with the fixed certainty of a caliph but I wouldn’t call him a natural draftsman. His confident line is ruffled by a sense of reckless speculation.
I recently saw an exhibition of David’s drawings and was struck by his poetic sense for the page. Silent intervals give way to scrambled agitation invoking the messiness of thought with the clarity of articulation. His true debt is to the tussled sheets of Frederico Zuccero, those rough sketches cluttered with pentimenti.
In a recent interview with the art historian Toshiro Oh, David described his connection to Italian Mannerism as “a prayerless captivity.” It was a typical Schoffman comment, empty, pretentious and obfuscating.
David, if you are reading this: Shut up and draw!
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