Tuesday, February 03, 2015

WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?


What are details to some are consequential to others. Small yet puissant components can trigger in the specialist insights inaccessible to the casual glancer who glides distractedly and cheerfully moves on.

My fine comrade David Schoffman is precisely the kind of annoying pedant who plants himself in front of works of art and ponders them interminably in a silent aura of elitist entitlement.



Wherever he goes he follows the scent of excellence and genius. He values the intimate experience of being with great works so much that he can barely tolerate the presence of well intentioned culture vultures fouling, what he sees as the sacred perfumes of timeless mastery.


At one point he seriously advocated for the restricted access of artistic monuments to specialists and scholars alone. "Why must I be forced to listen to squealing kids and cell phones while studying the compacted space of a Carracci altarpiece or the elegant calligraphy in a 9th century Tang manuscript"?





I'll tell you why David: Because you're not the only pebble on the beach! Art indeed has a civilizing effect on the ignorant and the unlathered and if an accountant cares to see a rolodex in a Rothko, who are you to quibble?


Do you supply liner notes every time some schumck wants to buy one of your precious painterly enigmas??

The Body Is His Book #64, Oil on linen, David Schoffman 2015