Wednesday, May 21, 2008

LIVE DRAW
EIGHT ARTISTS - THREE MODELS - LOTS OF PAPER



I detect a weakening in David Schoffman’s convictions. His normally strident tones have turned dulcet and accommodating. He seems battle weary and tentative. There is neither thrill nor frenzy in his carriage and those of us who have grown accustomed to his ardent theatricality are now left with only the gaunt niceties of respectable politesse.

Could this signal the curfew of his creativity or merely the solemnity that comes with age. His former self was a shapeless ecstasy, an intellect inflamed, a noisy chorus of urgent enthusiasms. Now he is a vacant precinct of predictability and habit. Where he once sought provocation, he now strives toward effortless geniality.

Perhaps this explains his flirtation with “public drawing”. Maybe Live Draw signals the tug of an inevitable decay, a muffled retreat into the featherbed of pleasing picture making. It could be that the false calm of insouciant color and nimble line are precisely the ideals toward which Schoffman currently leans.

The public will have a chance to evaluate all this on Saturday night, May 24th at DCA Fine Art in Santa Monica.

I’m grateful that I can’t attend.

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