THE STONES OF MAHAVIRA

Dispersed throughout the icy floor stones of the Mahavira Monastery in Ko Kong, Cambodia, lay the most peculiar images of the Buddha in all of Southeast Asia. This 10th Century architectural puzzle, situated on the western bank of the Kah Bpow River narrowly survived both the relentless American bombings as well as the bloodletting purges of the Khmer Rouge.

To walk thorough the dim halls of the monastery, lit only by the rusty glow of scented handmade candles, is to walk through an enchanted and innocent past. The serene, almost otherworldly atmosphere is transforming.

After half a dozen visits and countless hours of interviews and documentation, David Schoffman has completed his film about the Buddhas of Mahavira. Recently screened at the Boina Film Festival, it was awarded the Égout d’Or.

Below is a short clip.

SOAP OPERA

An unusual call to duty forced David Schoffman to suddenly drop everything and hop on a plane to Davos, where, waiting for him on the tarmac were Ambassador Terentius and his improbably fetching bride Nita. Whispers, suppositions and scuttlebutt have always provided a tattling basso continuo whenever Nita Terentius and David Schoffman were linked, the ligaments of lechery follow Schoffman like a late evening shadow no matter who his accomplice might be, but in this particular case the prattle was especially scurrilous. The Grand Opera Company of Davos’ production of Handel’s Tamerlano was scheduled to open on February 28th. The Terentius’ were heavily invested in the success of the production, in part because they were secretly backing it under the cover of the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches and in larger part because Nita had been commissioned to design the sets.

The day was approaching and Nita was clearly over her head.

Remembering that years back Schoffman had done a torpidly received series of drawings based on the theme of famous suicides, he was summoned to offer his input. Rendering Bajazet’s demise with greater tact was of particular importance.

He saved the day and received no credit but when photographed at the opening gala sharing a toast with Terentius whose copious décolletage was exquisitely governed in a charcoal Monique Lhuilier, the International Herald Tribune ran the picture with the caption “Life Imitates Art As Cosi Fan Tutte Outshines Tamerlano At Davos Premiere.”

Tamerlano Study No. 27
2009

CHEBSHI OR SCHOFFMAN

On most nights from a small fishing village nested on the southern spine of Turkey, half way between Antalya and Mersin, a lighthouse can be seen with a faint flicker of yellow light illuminating the small room cupped beneath its aging crest. With grave indifference, Sevket Serbes sits hunched over a weather beaten oak worktable painting meticulous patterns on stiff muslin sheets.

He calls these patterns “chebshi,” an Eteocypriot word that roughly translates as “spent seed.” Over the course of forty years as keeper of the Acik Kapi Lighthouse, Serbes has painted over seven hundred chebshi paintings. They cover the rounded walls of his priapic home like an hallucinogenic gauze of unperturbed madness. The effect, upon seeing this riot of color and detail, is that one is in the presence of something frighteningly strange and urgently important.

David Schoffman, in a recent BBC interview mentioned in passing that he had once seen a black and white reproduction of the Serbes Chebshi and that it may have informed his work in some oblique way.

David Schoffman is a liar.

In 1981, Schoffman and I were on our way from Tibilisi to Ephesus in an asthmatic two-door, Zastava Koral when we stopped in Tarsus to join some Italian college students on a Mediterranean day cruise. We docked at the Acik Kapi Lighthouse for a light lunch and a tour of Serbes’ paintings, a common destination for tourists at that time. Schoffman was mesmerized by the works and whispered to me (we were in our 20’s at the time), “Malaspina, je volerai ceci tient des idées et il me fera célèbre.”

LITERATURE

The publication of Melissa DeTourney's recent critical tour de force David Schoffman: Subverter of Grave Horizons represents a significant contribution to the already bloated sub-catagory now known in our graduate programs as Schoffman Studies.




In her new book, DeTourney, associate professor of semiotics at Coglihn University in Newgrange, argues that Schoffman’s early close reading of Becarrie’s Amoureuses Volcaniques marked a decisive realignment of his aesthetic objectives. She further insists, and here she differs with both Obé and Castel, that Schoffman’s Body Is His Book: 100 Paintings is a shill for an occult and far more complex body of work based on Duchamp’s Étant donnés.

At a recent signing at Seattle’s Tall Order Books, DeTourney was physically assaulted by a disturbed young painter and puppeteer who strenuously objected to what he called “the cultish clique of Schoffmanerites.”