C'EST TOUT NAZE

The first time my dear friend David Schoffman set foot in Garentoux he was horrified by what he saw.

Portrait of Pierre Bon-Humaine. David Schoffman, 2011

Founded in 1652 by the Frères de la Douleur in Villeneuve-le-Roi, the Garentoux asylum is known mostly for its famous former inmates including Émile-Jacques Partout, Latude Esquirol and the Marquis de Saint-Séploudt. The unconventional therapies that have made the hospital so controversial, have, if anything, become more irregular with time. Though the incidences of violence have decreased, the percentages of full rehabilitation have remained relatively low. 

Chances are, if you enter Garentoux as a patient,  you will remain interned for the rest of your life.

I have yet to make up my mind regarding the ethics of "Barjot," David's most recent exhibition. Comprised of 635 beautifully executed ink drawings, the show documents with chilling candor each and every inmate of the sanatorium. Writing in Revue Hebdomadaire Fiable, René Charcuterie called it a "scandale de premier ordre." He went on to excoriate André Quills, the director of the hospital, for allowing his patients to become a "spectacle for the prurient high-brow," (" un spectacle pour l'élite libidineux").

I, for one, am unmoved by this skittish propriety, My chief concern is that none of Schoffman's subjects received any monetary compensation for their services, a galling detail considering the fact that the show sold out before the opening!

DISTRACTION

The magnificent measure of a man, especially of a painter, is the capacity to absorb the mockery of one's peers. It requires a degree of self-effacement beyond the mere necessary. It commands a pressured claim upon an artist's fragile ego, summoning him toward the frivolous and the burlesque. My comical comrade David Schoffman merits our sincerest admiration after submitting to the clownish buffoonery of Hollywood, appearing in the new reality television program, Oily Canvas.

Still from episode 5 of Oily Canvas, Connerie Entertainment Ltd, 2011

A small camera crew attached itself to David for six full weeks, following him daily through the grinds and travails of studio life. We see him fastidiously firing staples into husky, over-sized stretcher bars. We watch fixedly as he struggles to blend his buttery paint into subtle grades of dim earth greens, coffee yellows and raucous reds and pinks. We witness his triumphs and frustrations, his daily crucibles with form and his rare moments of aesthetic exhilaration.

My favorite moment captured the unexpected visit of the flamboyant, freelance curator, Antonija Celik. An unshaven Schoffman is seen working in his atelier wearing a threadbare cloth bathrobe and a bright pair of orange striped boxer shorts. Celik, claiming to be passing through the neighborhood, drops by, ostensibly to see the progress of The Body Is His Book, Schoffman's long suffering, as yet incomplete series of 100 paintings. 

Antonija Celik in David Schoffman's Los Angeles studio. Connerie Entertainment Ltd, 2011

Without revealing too much ... little real work was completed that day.

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY

THE DIVIDED CITY OF NICOSIA SPRAWLS LIKE THE HIMALAYAN MOSS.  SWELLING LIKE A FUSILLADE OF FAT IN A TIGHT FITTING SUIT, THE CITY STRUGGLES TO CONTAIN ITS FRUCTIFEROUS GROWTH. APARTMENT BLOCKS, SHOPPING MALLS AND OFFICE PLAZAS VIE FOR VALUABLE REAL ESTATE WITH PROJECTED AMPHITHEATERS, LUXURY LOFTS, PARKING LOTS AND CASINOS.  IT'S A DYNAMIC METROPOLIS, DESPITE ITS CONTENTIOUS HISTORY AND IT SEEMS FITTING THAT MY DEAR FRIEND, DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS SOMEHOW EMBROILED IN THIS COSMOPOLITAN FRACAS.

Casino Seminolé, the three story gambling emporium on Onasagorus Avenue recently commissioned Schoffman to design a set of blackjack cards. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that he will receive twenty-thousand Turkish lira per card, making it the most costly deck in history. Each card will initially appear as a limited edition lithograph and to date the most popular one is the Five of Diamonds.

Five of Diamonds, David Schoffman 2011

Few North Cypriots realize that the basis of his motif is the Acropolis Museum's much admired Ares in Repose. Perhaps it's a not too subtle poke, a measure for measure of sorts, an artistic reprisal for the decidedly unartful Turkish role in all those flotillas.