EVERY PATH HAS ITS PUDDLE

Nara Era ritual head. Hand-carved kaya wood 



Like Peter Paul Rubens, in addition to being and accomplished painter, my good friend David Schoffman is an avid collector as well. Whereas Rubens had a weakness for antiquities, cameos and coins, David leans toward the mysterious cult objects of Asia and Africa.

Much of his collection was gathered while traveling. Instead of purchasing his objets d'art from conventional sources he typically finds some disreputable black marketeer and smuggles his trophies past unsuspecting customs agents and easily compromised border guards.

Lacquered Sengoku Head, Japan, 1674

He has an ungovernable passion for fine-cut Natabori single block sculptures of grotesque heads with priapic noses. Five years ago on an ill-fated trip to Japan with the obstreperous orientalist Sir Galwain Thomlinson and his wife, Dahlia Danton, Schoffman brought back no less than five-hundred such heads. Their uneven quality, dubious provenances and questionable authenticities has not deterred Collective 54 from including David in their prominent and highly regarded exhibition series, "Artists Collect."

I've previewed the show (it opens on March 1st) and the installation is truly stunning. The United States Department of the Treasury is currently investigating the collection piece by painstaking piece. If it is determined that any of the works were acquired illicitly or have entered the country improperly, Schoffman may very well be indicted.

All this makes great publicity for Collective 54, (membership has doubled just within the past two weeks), but bodes poorly for my reckless friend David. 

Quelle honte.