It is a mixed blessing for artists well within the fluted straits of mid-career to be suddenly lauded by the young. Panegyric praise tacks a bit too closely to eulogy. Unequivocal valediction is more redolent of ashes and incense than the vital stench of sweat and sperm. I caution my good friend David Schoffman against callow critics bearing gifts.
The young Brooklyn wunderkind Spark Boon was in Los Angeles recently kissing the ring of one of the art world's greatest recluses. Picking paintings as if they were fresh strawberries, the flamboyant critic/curator (is that not a conflict of interest?) is assembling a retrospective of my easily flattered friend's work.
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| New York critic/curator Spark Boon reviewing work in David Schoffman's Culver City studio, February 2013 |
I've plowed this fetid field before. A few years back I was seduced by the fetching femme-fatale of academia, Orestia Shestov, into submitting to a week's worth of inquisitorial privacy probing masquerading as 'research.' Sure it was flattering at first to be grilled by a gorgeously bookish intellectual but it didn't take long for the entire ordeal to deteriorate into a catechism of recriminating innuendo.
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| Orestia Shestov, 2013 (photo courtesy of Plangent Press) |
With a voice as commanding as a Cossack, Shestov accused me of all manner of artistic negligence and fraud. She cited the work in my 2004 exhibition, Croquis Salaces at the Musée
de la Ferraille Culturelle in Bordeaux as an example of what she called "classic retreads"- "paraphrases retravaillées de thèmes fatigués" - (Shetov speaks a beautifully nuanced idiomatic French albeit with a Alsatian accent). She latter published a none too subtle hatchet job in the widely read Hors de Propos, costing me innumerable sleepless nights where I plotted elaborate revenge fantasies.
de la Ferraille Culturelle in Bordeaux as an example of what she called "classic retreads"- "paraphrases retravaillées de thèmes fatigués" - (Shetov speaks a beautifully nuanced idiomatic French albeit with a Alsatian accent). She latter published a none too subtle hatchet job in the widely read Hors de Propos, costing me innumerable sleepless nights where I plotted elaborate revenge fantasies.
All I'm saying is that Schoffman should be skeptical of the honey tongued flummery of budding, ambitious arts professionals. To them, old fossils like us are merely opportunities - thin pretexts for their own petty, parasitical aggrandizement.
Shestov made sure to feather my loins before she twisted the dagger into my throat. I just don't trust that character Boon. Just look at his moustache!
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