INFLATION

When the Colorado tenth circuit court converted Valmont EEB2 from an individual Chapter 11 petition to a Chapter 7 the California art world experienced an unexpected ripple. The forced liquidation of business assets was a routine affair until a weathered Strathmore sketchbook was discovered under a mountain of black accounting binders.

Dated September 1969 and signed on the front in an adolescent cursive, the product of rote training in what used to be called penmanship, was the name David Schoffman.

Untitled drawing, David Schoffman, conté crayon, 1969

This remarkable discovery of Schoffman juvenilia - by my calculation David was 13 when this drawing was made - has forced the critical community into a radical reassessment of an entire oeuvre. Previously, the conventional wisdom has been that the early stirrings of Schoffman's imagination were deeply rooted in his complete and total lack of academic training. His early work, which was seen as a combination of rabid appropriation of affichiste pastiche and Franco-Belgian bandes-dessinées could very well have been a more organic outgrowth of Bargue's systematized canon of classicized forms.

I find this reappraisal rather fascinating for it sheds some light on this important period in my dear friend's development. Though it is not the precocity of the drawing above that amazes me - my own drawings from childhood are quite frankly much more accomplished - it is that a court appointed "specialist" appraised the entire 20 sheet sketchbook at $115,000!

Now there is a mad treasure hunt for more of these trifles.


Nom de Dieu!!!