Ethicum Perplexus

In the early eighties my altruistic friend David Schoffman volunteered at the L'Hôpital St Rocco pour les Aliénés Criminels in Bastia. This picturesque asylum, directly across the street from the Church of San Giovanni Battista offers Corsica's most enviable view of the island of Elba. It was there where David conducted an unguided, unsanctioned experiment upon an entire ward of rapists, murderers, arsonists and sadists. It was there where he completed his now famous, one-hundred and twenty paneled painting "Les Cinglés de Créer."

Les Cinglés de Créer, oil on 120 panels, David Schoffman and Ward Seven, 1988

In 1988 "art therapy" was a questionable discipline in Europe and the idea of organizing an unruly and undisciplined group of criminally insane inmates into an oil painting workshop was thoroughly unthinkable. David never bothered to propose the project to the hospital's notoriously conservative director, Dr. Maurice Etourdi.

Instead, he merely smuggled the necessary material into St. Rocco's laundry facility, a place where the most violent inmates were sent to work, and secretly instructed them on the finer points of color theory and "fat on lean" paint application.

The stunning results are self-explanatory but Schoffman has kept the work secret until now. Fearing damaging litigation, the work was known only to a small group of trusted friends and colleagues. Now that Dr Etourdi is dead, Schoffman, in conjunction with the Musée des Anomalies Moderne in Arnaudville, has decided to make the work public with a comprehensive exhibition with full and complete factual (if embarrassing) disclosure.

Now it is left to the public to make a fair ethical accounting of the genesis of this amazing work of art.