FATEFUL DETOURS



Experiencing conversation with David Schoffman is a geometrical progression of ever widening tangents and digressions. It’s a mind made transparent by the jags of association. A minor mention of a mosquito bite may lead to a lengthy discourse on Elias Canetti’s “The Agony of Flies.” The subject of sports may lead into Robert Musil’s passion for weightlifting. Musil inevitably leads into Bismarck, which always ends up with Henry Kissinger, the bombing of Cambodia and the overthrow of Allende.

Once, at a dinner party at the home of Maurice Vitel, the former French Ambassador to Luxembourg, the conversation veered toward the question of whether it was morally defensible to poison a flock of sparrows if they actively hindered the cultivation of one’s vineyard. A heated exchange ensued between those who militantly defended the rights of animals and those who militantly defended the rights of wine lovers. In a rare moment of détente while the debaters regrouped around aged cognac and Haitian cigars, Schoffman recounted the following anecdote:

“The failed writer, Boris Khrobkov, a distant relative of Isaac Babel, labored his entire life on an unfinished novel on the subject of the Huguenot exile. Living in the Soviet Union severely proscribed his ability to do the proper historical research and so he petitioned the cultural commissar of Vitebsk a well as the president of the writer’s union for permission to travel abroad. Despite his connection to Babel, his permission was granted for a one-week trip to Paris. His wife and two small children were, of course, required to stay behind.

“On his last day in Paris, where incidentally he did much drinking and very little research, he decided, on a whim, to visit the grave of Ingres at Père-Lachaise. It was late fall and sparrows had gathered in clusters around the islands of breadcrumbs left behind by the cemetery workers. Khrobkov, hung over and bitter about his impending return, grabbed a sparrow by the throat and crushed its skull like a walnut.

“Like any good Russian, he followed that arbitrary act of cruelty with an hysterical, inconsolable fit of weeping. At the very height of his shameless bleating, the great Cartier-Bresson walked by with his small field spaniel Molière. Always ready with his 35mm Lieca rangefinder, he snapped the now famous photograph 'Le Poét Pleurant.'

"Khrobkov returned to Moscow where he was accused of treason and was shot by a firing squad."

THE ANGELS NEVER TAKE FLIGHT



His eyes were like tongues inflamed. He had been up all night and his lids were a soggy crimson (had he been weeping?). His unsteady voice was like a dogcart over gravel. His hands were black with charcoal, his nails, early moons of soot.

He had been drawing.

It was Paris in the 70’s and David Schoffman was known as the hardest working, most unproductive painter among his peers. Sustained by faith, hope and Pernod his long apprenticeship was cheered only by the occasional trip to Rome. He was in the habit of working all night in an improvised studio a few blocks north of the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur. He was at war with what he called “the thunderous silence of Watteau and the silent thunder of Rothko.”

In those days, painting was more a confession then a profession. “Career” was a foreign phrase from the taxonomy of landlords and martinets. Painting was an obsession, a calling, a slow spiral into the perils self-knowledge. It took residence within the entrails of an artist with a fixed and incorruptible mastery. It withstood mockery and failure. It was the insatiable lover.

I am brought back to these memories as I vacation presently in a small villa in Kusadasi. Watching the wind sift through the palmettos, I hear the fishermen casting their nets into the quiet Aegean. Trawling for eel and octopus is also not a “career.”

We were right in those days. And we continue being right.

RESCUED BY ABSENCE



Just when David’s fragile tranquility was almost fully restored, he was forced, once again, to mingle among the footmen and princes of Los Angeles’ artworld. What cruel misfortune to have to endure the festive klatch of a “closing reception.” What horror feigning unmerry gladness among the chilly cognoscenti. I’m so grateful to be curled and wet within the comforting folds of Mother France.

I heard the reception was so crowded one had to wedge one’s way to the bar like a pickpocket in order to get a plastic cup of meek vinegary wine.

I heard that people hissed that Carpentier’s death was fortunate for sales, a crass, though accurate assessment. I’m told that my work was described as gratuitously concupiscent, a judgment I find typically American. Only Schoffman enjoyed unqualified acclaim, a magnet for flattery as if he were a rich and ailing uncle.

Though I left behind no gilded monuments, I was far from disgraced. I would be happy to return to Los Angeles and exhibit more work. Perhaps I will include palm trees in my next series.

CODA

Schoffman informs me that the unbuttoned denizens of Los Angeles need an extra week to see “Three Mendacious Minds”. Tranquilized by summer’s beneficence, armies of tardy sophisticates beseeched the gallery into extending the exhibition for several more days. Some have actually become zealots, returning to the show with the frequency of ardent lovers. I am heartened and grateful to these unappeasable enthusiasts and they are all welcome to visit me in Paris.

Cradled as he is by admirers, David Schoffman is nonetheless an unsatisfied man. When I saw him at the opening he appeared rain-beaten, almost bestial. He never gives throat to pleasure, as if the turbulence of his inner-life is too stirring. Contemplative to the point of desolate, some say he comes off as bruised and discourteous.

I’m told there will be a closing reception on Friday evening, September 7th. If you think David appears drowsy and disconsolate …. lui donnez une étreinte.

Tell him you were sent by Currado!