DIPLOMACY

People of good intention attribute to the work of my friend David Schoffman metaphors and meaning that at times stretch the limits of credulity. There is an entire cottage industry of Schoffman studies, parsing signs and innuendo from his published essays, his interviews and his lectures trying to assign a neat, fixed and coherent theory to his variegated oeuvre.

Where The Maronites Are, oil on canvas, Schoffman 2011

Some see in David's work a visual reflection of Lessing's Philotas and the moral and ethical questions of self-sacrifice. Others argue that Schoffman's obsession with patterns and repetition are simply stunning restatements of Pythagorian tetractys. I attended one lecture in Zurich by a renown art historian who claimed that David's life's work was nothing less than an eloquent refutation of Lacanian jouissance and the erogenous circle. 

 I have known David for over thirty years and though he remains as opaque to me now as he was when we were young I believe I have a unique window on his artistic sensibilities. Therefore I believe that the following improbable theory may indeed be the one closest to the truth.   

Rachel Fax-Grote, professor emeritus of Semiotic Choreography at the University of Wales recently wrote in a much publicized paper entitled "The Poetics of Real Estate," that the obscure and idiosyncratic forms that appear in Schoffman's recent panel paintings, if read correctly, redraw the contentious maps of the Middle East.

Judea and Samaria, oil on canvas, Schoffman 2011

Ms. Fax-Grote, when discussing the piece above, was uncertain whether the dark areas were to be part of Israel or part of Palestine but she seemed reasonably convinced that the small, light, box shapes were were meant to signify either international peacekeepers or future locations of Starbuck's.