SCHOFFMAN: PAINTER by Currado Malaspina

David Schoffman's alarming essay, "Machines That Speed Too Slow," published in 1992 in Olympus Quarterly is as appurtenant now as it was prescient then. Triggered by the appointment of Jerry Embudo as director of CCMA, Schoffman's infamous jeremiad is now required reading in most graduate programs in Museum Studies.

Embudo, as many people in the art world remember, was a veteran commercial art dealer and notorious kingmaker. Sterns/Embuto in its heyday represented the likes of Caeiro, de Campos, Carpentier and Danton. The idea that the cultural and pedagogic mandate of a major art museum was handed over to a merchant was highly controversial, to say the least. Schoffman scathingly exposed this brazen betrayal of principles in a 3000 word screed of such vitriolic eloquence that even the barons of the agora (those, of course who could read without moving their lips) were moved.

Some saw Schoffman's catalog of grievances as a naive tilt toward the windmills of wishful thinking. They took particular pleasure in believing that the publication precipitated the ruin of his robust career. Others, by contrast, saw it as a courageous cri de coeur that catapulted a critically acclaimed painter into a wealthy one.

I remember thinking that it was just another self-serving pageant of David's pharmacopia of adjectives coaxing some trivial succès de scandale into personal gain.