INELEGANT LARCENY

ARTISTIC INGENUITY IS A VALUE I PRIZE ABOVE ALL OTHERS. PERHAPS MY MOTH-EATEN VALUES HAVE FALLEN INTO DECREPITUDE BUT MY IDEAL OF CONCEPTUAL ORIGINALITY IS ONE I STILL HOLD DEAR. MY GOOD FRIEND DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS APPARENTLY UNIMPAIRED BY THIS ADORABLY FOSSILIZED NOTION.

Interterrene, Twickenham Codex, 1786

THE IMAGE ABOVE IS FROM THE FAMOUS TWICKENHAM CODEX. THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT WHICH DATES FROM THE LATE 18TH CENTURY IS LOCATED IN THE KUHSCHEIßE ANTHNEUM IN SAARLAN. THE ENTIRE VOLUME IS RICHLY ILLUMINATED WITH WONDERFULLY ECCENTRIC IMAGES. EACH PAGE IS A SMALL UNIVERSE OF METICULOUSLY RENDERED DETAIL FULL OF COUNTERPUNCTUAL PATTERNS AND LABYRINTHINE DESIGNS.

The Body Is His Book #46, David Schoffman 2010

EXHIBIT A

THE NAKED APPROPRIATION AND INSOLENT INFERENCES IN SCHOFFMAN'S PICTORAL PURSE-SNATCHINGS ARE SLACK, DILATORY AND BENEATH THE STATURE AND DIGNITY OF THE PAINTERLY PROFESSION.

SNAP OUT OF IT, DAVID ... YOU'RE BETTER THAN THAT!

SON HISTOIRE ET SES CAUSES

BACK AT WORK IN HIS RUSTIC, ROOMY, LOS ANGELES STUDIO, MY HOPEFUL ALLY, DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS DETERMINED TO PROVE HIS CRITICS WRONG.

Though the critics were enthralled by my modest offerings 

at the Top Tomato show, they were far less captivated by David's overwrought and torpid polyptych. In an otherwise temperate review, Didier Sepharad of La Sonnette Hebdomadaire described Schoffman as a 'visual gasbag" (gascon visuelle). Caustically, he continued with a series of ad hominem characterizations, calling him, among other things a "bloviating Saussurian" (crieur Saussurian). Not to be outdone, Francoise Shalosh, chief cultural critic of L'Image Acoustique, France's leading literary periodical called Shoffman's (sic) work "yammering carrion" (des cadavres parlants) "unfit for public consumption" (impropres à la consommation publique).

All in all David has taken it all in stride, chalking it up to anti-Semitism and the deep cultural divide between France and the United States.

Le Mauvais Rêve

Displaced and disoriented by the incommodious agonies of trans-Atlantic transit, I shuffled, sore and somnolent into a gallery awash with strangers. The April 2nd vernissage at ART/SPACE LA @ Top Tomato was an oddity of the first order.

Eboli, oil on panel, David Schoffman 2011

 My capricious colleague David Schoffman enjoyed all the companionable advantages of a welcoming crowd. I, on the other hand, was treated like a miscreant. The three-person exhibition was crocheted into an incoherent burble of argumentative images. While the hagiographic  tabernacles from the departed Micah Carpentier vied uneasily with Schoffman's large sepulchral atrocity my subtle and understated works on paper hung on the main wall with a quiet and profound dignity.

Adding to the clumsy inadhesion was a bizarrely beautiful kabuki that arrived unannounced and departed unexplained and left the stunned spectators wondering if David's famous aesthetic indecision is an act of poetry or ineptitude. 

DE METEORIS

Sixteenth century Alto-Adigian artist Ezra Sangiori, a painter whose sublime frescoes grace countless villas and chapels throughout his native Rovereto has always been a favorite of my dear friend David Schoffman.

Putti Leccacazzi, attributed to Ezra Sangiori 1588

 Though intellectually ill equipped and undisciplined, Schoffman has recently been entrusted to compile, collect and curate the first ever Sangiori master drawing exhibition. The task is difficult. Sangiori worked during a period of major landslides and throughout the centuries many of the structures that housed his work have suffered severe structural damage. Attribution has proven to be a delicate enterprise with all Renaissance artists of the Trento l'Adice but this is especially true of Sangiori. Schoffman's untrained eye has already stirred a brass clatter of backbiting controversy regarding Sangiori's famous Disegni di Putti, a series of particularly battered works recently discovered in the Vallagarina Geniza.

When I asked David why he got involved in the first place with a task so clearly over his head, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully and recited from memory: 

"Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella c'ha ricevuto già 'l colpo mortale".