Monique Espoirperdu and Jiro Attentat are two of the biggest unknown art collectors active today. This young couple are much better known as the founders and co-directors of Énigme Technique Français, the largest digital archive of discrete continuous range data systems in Europe. The business quarterly Richesse Tavelées refers to them as "the Pelléas and Mélisande of 21st century information marketing." They also own almost 40 pieces by my good-fortuned friend David Schoffman.
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| Monique Espoirperdu and Jiro Attentat: Double Portrait, David Schoffman 2011 |
I learned this on a recent visit to their modest villa in Cassis. I was given a tour of their collection by Monique and her extremely knowledgeable assistant Claudine and discovered the double portrait above hung prominently in the airy, light-filled salle à manger.
It is an extremely uncharacteristic work for David and the way they told the story, he needed to be aggressively urged to accept the commission. He worked from life and the right-hand section of Jiro came about fairly easily. The section of the left however, needed over eighty sittings and the process lasted for over a year and a half.
Claudine explained to me over coffee that the whole ordeal was a small cauchemar and that everyone involved was relieved when the picture was finally completed. "It was the stuff of a cheap romance novel," was how Claudine put it, "money, sex, more money, more sex, betrayal, treachery, scandal, drugs and the constant stench of turpentine everywhere!"
I wonder why David never mentioned any of this before.
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