PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS

Micah Carpentier and unknown, 1970

 

 The presumption that David Schoffman is the heir apparent to Micah Carpentier's artistic legacy carries an interesting burden. Though unquestioningly vital to any full understanding of the Latin American avant-garde, Carpentier's virile hallucinations have come under serious question of late, a question that sheds light on Schoffman's much ballyhooed "ethic".

Using the kind of precision infra-red scanners typically used to locate grenade launchers within urban battlefields, Professor Jai Tot Olivares of Universidad Peruana de los Hechos has recently uncovered glaring stylistic inconsistencies within Carpentier's drawings from the early 70's. His research found that when Carpentier was a visiting artist at the Instituto de Arte de Sevilla he collected the sketches of his students and with barbarous audacity drew directly over them, claiming them as his own!

It is difficult to discern the ripened hand of the master from the callow artlessness of the acolyte and that is precisely what gives this work so much charm. He exhibited these "collaborative" works on paper at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneos, Vizcaya in 1974 and Moisés Montanoro, principal art critic of the well-regarded weekly publication, Arte Boletín described it as "the cryptic ashes of lust and the frayed threads of a long preserved virginity".

Several years ago, shortly before his famous exhibit at Philippe Léchage I saw Schoffman rummage through the trash behind the  École des Beaux-Arts. I thought nothing of it, other than it being more evidence of David's bizarre habits as a tourist. With Olivares' new findings, I now see both Schoffman's and Carpentier's work with much greater skepticism.