LA VITA NUOVA

 

Pity the forlorn painter, the drudge of daily introspection, the constant rumble of doubt and indecision. I wisely gave that up years ago in favor of the more socially forgiving undertaking of what has been dubiously called "conceptual art".  Not so for my long-suffering confederate, David Schoffman.

He typically spends his entire day applying moist, oleaginous layers of expensive oil paint over carefully prepared linen panels until the surfaces sparkle with phosphorescent luminosity!

Quelle bêtise!!

The Body Is His Book #54

 Does he really live with the delusion that anyone cares? Is he not aware of how marginal the ancient art of painting is to our times? Is he ignorant of the intelligent truth that the arts are a mere superfluity, a piddling trifle, a curious but irrelevant relic of a no-longer near-past? 

And above all, Painting, that narcoleptic métier of interest only to  students and retired old ladies. 

It is only the spectacle that matters now! David should surrender his soft sable brushes and join the world of the living. He should emerge from the depths of his private meditations and wade in the shoals of superficiality. There is still hope for this reasonable man. There is space in his imagination for the comprehensible and the entertaining.

I mean ... the guy doesn't even own a cellphone!!!! 

FOUR-HUNDRED DRAWINGS

A year's worth of frenzied toil and a sea-wind of indefatigable labor has delivered a harvest of literally hundreds of significant works-on-paper by my learned friend David Schoffman. For once I approve the efforts of this self-approving, humorless menace. 

He has always had an intellectual hatred, a veritable commonwealth of terrors that have obstructed the mature development of his paintings. This formidable cache of recent drawings is an entirely different story. Wild, urgent and iridescent, these new works astonish with their sheer variety and range.

Combative and competitive bastard that I am, I confess that my joints ache as I compose this (for once) honest assessment of my arch-rival's efforts.

VACATION

August 2010, on the terrace of دراسات الكتاب المقدس

In his decrepit Los Angeles neighborhood, a perennially gray place of abandoned storefronts, vacant lots, toothless whores and teenage runaways, my dear friend David Schoffman works tirelessly, oblivious to the surrounding blight. In an odd way, he thrives on decay and is attracted to trash like others are drawn to spectacular landscapes and dramatic sunsets.

With one exception.

August of each year David spends a month in the beautiful port city of Tyre. Though the prophet Ezekiel foretold of its demise, this ancient city thrives to this day, attracting a small summer community of international artists and writers. The Dutch critic Aleydis Eden, whose sprawling villa overlooks the ruins of Al Mina calls it the "Montmartre of the Middle East".

On any given evening, David and his coterie of misfits can be found sipping arak with black rum and nibbling on sambousak, kallaj and moutabal on the terrace of دراسات الكتاب المقدس one of Tyre's trendiest restaurants. It's a far cry from L. A. and I remain mystified to this day why David chooses to live there.