THE CONSOLATIONS OF PAINTING (POORLY)

My somber and serious friend David Schoffman sits in his studio and reflects upon the history of hardship. Not hardship in the abstract nor hardship as a universal condition. No, Schoffman's reflections are restricted to the local, the proximal and the personal. The history of hardship to my dear friend David is the history of his own undoing and the unraveling hardships he himself has "endured."

A recent book by Lee Cuypt, a distinguished fellow at the McTeague Institute in Cambridge argues that like many creative people, David Schoffman has faced many private and professional crucibles. In his view,what makes Schoffman unusual is his unique and stubborn inflexibility and his "hubristic opacity toward introspection and growth".  Cuypt patiently takes the reader through a chronology of David's  lengthy exhibition record, from the first one-man show at Verdurin/Bloch in 1978 to his most recent at Alt/Space LA. He finds a disturbing pattern in that when faced with an aesthetic choice, David invariably opts for the least accommodating, the least accessible and as a consequence, the most hermetic. He has alienated his allies and armed his detractors with an encyclopedia of justifiable jibes and jeremiads.

David has skillfully constructed his own isolation and operates in a figurative jail cell awaiting his execution. He lives a fantasy where his contemporaries are cast as charlatans and knaves and he alone righteously upholds and maintains the Western Tradition. Professor Cuypt cleverly calls this the  "Boethius Complex" and has written an elegantly argued polemic that will remain the standard text in Schoffman studies for a long time to come.

SIMULACRUM

"I HAVE BECOME A PROBLEM TO MYSELF."
MY DEAR FRIEND AND MENTOR, THE LATE MICAH CARPENTIER WAS FOND OF CITING THE CONFESSIONS OF AUGUSTINE.

Our Lady of Charity, Santiago de Cuba

David Schoffman's studio, Culver City, California

Beside his great works, Carpentier left little behind. It was as if he had envisioned his tragic, premature death and in preparation, denuded himself of the superfluous. Among the many relics in El Sanctuario de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, the historic basilica nestled in the foothills of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, is a small box containing the few things Micah did not consider impedimenta. Each object is doused with significance and sentimentality, or so claims my colleague David Schoffman.

I saw an exact facsimile in Schoffman's Los Angeles studio and I suspect that David might be running a neat cottage industry in Carpentier curio of questionable provenance.

COITUS INTERRUPTUS

Hokusai had his One-Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, Hiroshige had his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road, Yahweh had his Decalogue and now, my prolific friend David Schoffman  has his Twenty-Eight Rungs of Lust Deferred, a stunning graphic tour de force.

Chaste self-abnegation is a theme that has preoccupied David for many years. His 1998 lecture "Late Renaissance Religious Imagery and the Interrupted Urges of Michelangelo," delivered at l'Università di Eboli's Istituto di Ricerca Arcane and later published in the anthology Abstemious Art & Artists (Sheleg Books, 2001), posits the theory that immaculate self-discipline between 1490 and 1600 was a common and conscious aesthetic posture. Poets and painters, in direct opposition to Aretino's rakish, libertine excesses, proposed a more temperate trope and devoted their art toward an almost Tantric pre-climactic form of fulfillment. Michelangelo's Creation being the prime example of this type of erotic adjournment. 

Schoffman's theories are what we call in France, connerie pur and I'm sure, at heart, he knows this. He apparently was up for tenure and felt the need to gild the scholarly lily.

La Pensée Sauvage

My hapless friend David Schoffman's early attempts at systematic ethnographic research were costly though radiant failures.

Kaitabhuto Figurine - Java

As a young man, Schoffman spent months at a time trekking through unforgiving terrain in far flung countries looking for uncooked, untamed artifacts. Unlike a professionally trained researcher, David left the terra firma with a series of ideés fixes hoping to find confirmation in situ.

Chief among his biases was the assertion that any societal/cultural phenomena encoded in artisanal production has, at root, an instinctive urge for chaos and disruption. This hairbrained theory came from a dyslexic-driven misreading of Marcel Mauss' Essai Sur Le Don.

After fourteen years of sporadic dysentery, vague inflammations, assorted bug-bites and several near-death experiences, David returned to the comforts of cable tv and indoor plumbing without a single original thought but with a trove of wonderful drawings.

I'm told that in the United States, graduate school is an essential step for all ambitious artists. Though this idea is mocked here in France, perhaps David would have been better served by this more conventional rite-of-passage.

ALOOF AND FRAIL

THE EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENTS HAVE BEEN SENT OUT AND I AM PLEASED THAT THE IMAGE CHOSEN TO REPRESENT THE THREE OF US IS ONE OF MY DRAWINGS.

Carpentier of course, has no dog in this dispute but my good friend, collaborator and rival, David Schoffman, baring his irascible teeth  has decided to refight the long forgotten Guerre de Clichy. 

It was perhaps twenty five years ago in a small gallery on rue Truffaut, not far from l'Église Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles that I first noticed the stain of Schoffman's pestiferous predilection for competition. Making art for David is not a vocation but rather a furious and unrelenting blood sport. Unlike me and I dare say, Micah as well, he doesn't see his work as a sublime calling but more as an untamed cris-d'armes. Jousting with sheep and tilting at windmills David sees adversaries where others see colleagues and fellow-travelers.

We were involved in a group exhibition, similar to the one coming up next month in Los Angeles, and David insisted that the invitation list his name first and include a reproduction of one of his pieces at the exclusion of everyone else. The predictable outrage ensued and the festering scent of acrimonious discord followed the show throughout its duration and well beyond.

I understand that no small degree of excitement and anticipation surround the ALT/SPACE LA show. The pre-publicity has been generous and flattering. The public seems genuinely interested. Only David Schoffman is choked with suspicion and apprehension. Only David drowns in an absinthian dread.

Only David is capable of snatching collapse from within the jaws of luxury and triumph.