Friday, October 14, 2011

FOUL PLAY

The Lubyana Biennial is a hodgepodge of pladitudinous trifles, yet for some inexplicable reason most artists would press their first-borns into forced farm labor in order to be featured in this sprawling, rudderless exhibition. My dear friend David Schoffman is, unfortunately, no exception.


David Schoffman's Slominsky's Revenge, winner of the 2011 Principium Sapientiae

Through an intensive lobbying campaign engineered by his Paris dealer, Claude Doulachet-Vichy, David was represented in this year's extravaganza with a small room of six new paintings. Included in the group was not only the image above (Slominsky's Revenge) but also the much admired monumental picture Preponderate Deliverance.

It should come as no surprise that with a curatorial team rigged with Schoffman apologists that David was awarded the enviable Principium Sapientiae Prize, a distinction that comes with a handsome honorarium of 10,000 rubles.

It is no secret that Felix Anaximander, in addition to being the chief art critic of the Salonika Times is also an avid collector of Schoffman's work. Meno Hesiodic is the author of Schoffman, Carpentier and the Envy of Innocents (Crayfish Press 2008). Raquella Sans-Gabon was David's Montossori middle school principal before she reinvented herself as a specialist of contemporary art at Sotheby's.

This illustious trio can scarcely claim dispassionate objectivity!


The Curators from left to right: Felix Anaximander, Raquella Sans-Gabon, Meno Hesiodic 
This sort of insider wheeling and dealing must stop!

Thursday, October 06, 2011

THE LURIANIC JOURNALS


Like many Latin American avant-gardists of the 1960's, Micah Carpentier held an irrational yet insatiable fascination with all things mystical. From the bleating orthodoxies of Madame Blavatsky and the bifurcated "Fourth Way" of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky to the Shemtovian ecstasies of the lame and thaumaturgic Dovber of Mezritch, Carpentier was all over the metaphysical map. Every impulse and every epiphany was duly notated and illustrated in small, secret sketchbooks, hidden away in a dusty corner of his Havana studio.


Discovered in 2004 by his nephew Miroslav Carpentier-Mirabel, what later became known as the Lurianic Journals have finally been made public.


My good friend David Schoffman and I are currently in Montenegro devouring this new trove of Micah's work. We are thrilled to be reassessing and debating our impressions as well as revisiting our rivalries and mutual suspicions. We have resolved old conflicts only to cultivate new and equally passionate resentments. We are drinking heavily and eating rich, Slavic foods.


We are having a great time.

Monday, September 26, 2011

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.

Friday, September 16, 2011

CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION


In Paris, magazines aren't that big a deal. Yes, our kiosks are stocked with countless glossy editions catering to the variegated tastes of my countrymen but it is nothing like the United States. Fashion, sports, politics and gossip are pretty much all that the Gallic imagination can sustain. In America by contrast, every marginal interest has at least several periodicals devoted to it. Shrewd Investor, Video Game Review, Vegan Kitchen, Poker Chips and Tips, Farm Equipment Times and Better Triceps are among my favorite examples.

When I visit Los Angeles I love to trowel the voluminous newsstands of Hollywood hoping to stumble upon some esoteric niche. At one place I found no less than three magazines on the subject of solar panel de-installation, six colorful journals on Latin American economics and fourteen lushly photographed monthlies on the affluent Southern Californian "lifestyle."

The one that stuck out most conspicuously was a tasteful, understated issue called California Domicile. The reasons for my interest (and disappointment) are obvious.


Sunday, August 28, 2011

Ethicum Perplexus


In the early eighties my altruistic friend David Schoffman volunteered at the L'Hôpital St Rocco pour les Aliénés Criminels in Bastia. This picturesque asylum, directly across the street from the Church of San Giovanni Battista offers Corsica's most enviable view of the island of Elba. It was there where David conducted an unguided, unsanctioned experiment upon an entire ward of rapists, murderers, arsonists and sadists. It was there where he completed his now famous, one-hundred and twenty paneled painting "Les Cinglés de Créer."

Les Cinglés de Créer, oil on 120 panels, David Schoffman and Ward Seven, 1988
In 1988 "art therapy" was a questionable discipline in Europe and the idea of organizing an unruly and undisciplined group of criminally insane inmates into an oil painting workshop was thoroughly unthinkable. David never bothered to propose the project to the hospital's notoriously conservative director, Dr. Maurice Etourdi.

Instead, he merely smuggled the necessary material into St. Rocco's laundry facility, a place where the most violent inmates were sent to work, and secretly instructed them on the finer points of color theory and "fat on lean" paint application.

The stunning results are self-explanatory but Schoffman has kept the work secret until now. Fearing damaging litigation, the work was known only to a small group of trusted friends and colleagues. Now that Dr Etourdi is dead, Schoffman, in conjunction with the Musée des Anomalies Moderne in Arnaudville, has decided to make the work public with a comprehensive exhibition with full and complete factual (if embarrassing) disclosure.

Now it is left to the public to make a fair ethical accounting of the genesis of this amazing work of art.

Friday, August 12, 2011

FORTUNE WINKS


Fabrice Batya-Soulle, associate dean of the Collège de Maritime's School of Theology in Coutelle-sur-Marne is an estimable scholar and an original thinker. Author of 23 books and countless articles and essays, Batya-Soulle may be best known as the part-time lover of both Tanya Bar-Kochba and Dahlia Danton. He is also the world's foremost collector of the works of my friend, David Schoffman.

Fabrice Batya-Soulle, 2007 Dahlia Danton

In cannot be claimed by any standard of honest measurement that Fabrice is an attractive man. He bathes irregularly, his crooked teeth are ochred by years of chain-smoking and his disheveled appearance gives the impression of one who has just stirred from a park bench nap. His success with stunning women must be attributed to something else.

Tanya Bar-Kochba
 His connection to Schoffman is even more mysterious. As most of my readers know, David is a profligate and unprincipled gambler. A frequent visitor to the lush and disreputable casinos of Corsica and Greece, David has won and lost many small fortunes throughout the years. Never one to abstain from a lively game of Lansquenet, Texas Holdem or Piquet, Schoffman is well-known for his unscrupulousness and dishonesty.

He apparently met his match in Fabrice Batya-Soulle.


I have heard at least ten different accounts of their notorious encounter, each one varying only in its details. The basic outline is as follows: 

David, finding himself at a distinct numerical disadvantage at the Punto Banco table at either the Xanthi or the Rodos Casino was spotted 100,000 € by Batya-Soulle who was engaged in a spirited debate with a cocktail waitress nearby. Within minutes the ill-starred Schoffman was in hock to the esteemed theologian. Agreeing to meet the following day to settle their affairs, the two parted amicably after a late cocktail at a nearby saloon.

It is hardly worth mentioning that my afflicted friend David failed to show up at their appointed meeting - the professor held no such expectation. True to form, Schoffman contacted his new-found benefactor through an intermediary. He proposed making good his debt with a suite of small drawings newly completed for his much anticipated exhibition at Mokousis/Martin, scheduled for the following month.


The cunning academic quickly agreed, with the added condition that Schoffman include the phone number of the lovely Miss Danton. 
The show was canceled, David was dropped by the gallery and the professor enjoyed a prolonged tryst with one of the most beautiful women in the artworld. 


Dahlia Danton

Friday, August 05, 2011

N E I G H


Few people realize that my dear,reclusive and secretive friend David Schoffman has two rather well-known siblings. Many will find it even more astonishing that in addition to a younger sister, Marie-Eleanor Duquesnoy, David is an identical twin.

Sergei Monopol(né Schoffman)Marie-Eleanor Duquesnoy

Let's begin with Marie-Eleanor.

As most of my readers will know, Duquesnoy is one of the most feared and respected investigative reporters in Europe. A regular contributor to Zurich's Die Neue Republik, Marie-Eleanor cracked the famous Hufeisen Case, exposing rampant corruption among jockeys and trainers at Bargen's Shlomit Rennstrecke. She was the first European journalist to interview rebel leader Mousa Toobi Chalifa at his secluded compound at the foot of Mount Sahand in Kandovan. And perhaps most famously she forced the resignation of Didier Crottin, chief financial officer of Paon Fréres after revealing an elaborate scheme of money laundering residuals from the sale of counterfeit birth control medication.


Sergei Monopol né Stevie Schoffman, on the other hand, has always been known as a deadbeat.


Dining out on the prestige of his twin brother, Sergei has wormed his way into the corridors of the wealthy and powerful by passing himself off as David. He once sat eyeball to eyeball nursing margaritas,smoking strong Turkish cigarettes and discussing the color red with none other than Francis Bacon. He flew in Robert Rauschenberg's private plane listening to old cassettes of John Cage chanting improvised lyrics from the I-Ching.


His greatest stunt was when he visited my studio in Paris, convinced me to lend him a small drawing and attempted to sell it to Leo Castelli's housekeeper for a fraction of its worth.
Currado Malaspina, 1981
Nobody wanted to press charges but we insisted he submit to a full psychological evaluation.


Sergei Monopol (né Schoffman) hanged himself last November in his two-bedroom apartment in Rego Park, Queens. 

My bereaved friend David Schoffman hasn't been the same since.

Friday, July 22, 2011

C'EST TOUT NAZE

The first time my dear friend David Schoffman set foot in Garentoux he was horrified by what he saw.

Portrait of Pierre Bon-Humaine. David Schoffman, 2011

Founded in 1652 by the Frères de la Douleur in Villeneuve-le-Roi, the Garentoux asylum is known mostly for its famous former inmates including Émile-Jacques Partout, Latude Esquirol and the Marquis de Saint-Séploudt. The unconventional therapies that have made the hospital so controversial, have, if anything, become more irregular with time. Though the incidences of violence have decreased, the percentages of full rehabilitation have remained relatively low. 

Chances are, if you enter Garentoux as a patient,  you will remain interned for the rest of your life.

I have yet to make up my mind regarding the ethics of "Barjot," David's most recent exhibition. Comprised of 635 beautifully executed ink drawings, the show documents with chilling candor each and every inmate of the sanatorium. Writing in Revue Hebdomadaire Fiable, René Charcuterie called it a "scandale de premier ordre." He went on to excoriate André Quills, the director of the hospital, for allowing his patients to become a "spectacle for the prurient high-brow," (" un spectacle pour l'élite libidineux").

I, for one, am unmoved by this skittish propriety, My chief concern is that none of Schoffman's subjects received any monetary compensation for their services, a galling detail considering the fact that the show sold out before the opening!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

DISTRACTION

The magnificent measure of a man, especially of a painter, is the capacity to absorb the mockery of one's peers. It requires a degree of self-effacement beyond the mere necessary. It commands a pressured claim upon an artist's fragile ego, summoning him toward the frivolous and the burlesque. My comical comrade David Schoffman merits our sincerest admiration after submitting to the clownish buffoonery of Hollywood, appearing in the new reality television program, Oily Canvas.

Still from episode 5 of Oily Canvas, Connerie Entertainment Ltd, 2011

A small camera crew attached itself to David for six full weeks, following him daily through the grinds and travails of studio life. We see him fastidiously firing staples into husky, over-sized stretcher bars. We watch fixedly as he struggles to blend his buttery paint into subtle grades of dim earth greens, coffee yellows and raucous reds and pinks. We witness his triumphs and frustrations, his daily crucibles with form and his rare moments of aesthetic exhilaration.

My favorite moment captured the unexpected visit of the flamboyant, freelance curator, Antonija Celik. An unshaven Schoffman is seen working in his atelier wearing a threadbare cloth bathrobe and a bright pair of orange striped boxer shorts. Celik, claiming to be passing through the neighborhood, drops by, ostensibly to see the progress of The Body Is His Book, Schoffman's long suffering, as yet incomplete series of 100 paintings. 


Antonija Celik in David Schoffman's Los Angeles studio. Connerie Entertainment Ltd, 2011

Without revealing too much ... little real work was completed that day.

Friday, July 01, 2011

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY


THE DIVIDED CITY OF NICOSIA SPRAWLS LIKE THE HIMALAYAN MOSS.  SWELLING LIKE A FUSILLADE OF FAT IN A TIGHT FITTING SUIT, THE CITY STRUGGLES TO CONTAIN ITS FRUCTIFEROUS GROWTH. APARTMENT BLOCKS, SHOPPING MALLS AND OFFICE PLAZAS VIE FOR VALUABLE REAL ESTATE WITH PROJECTED AMPHITHEATERS, LUXURY LOFTS, PARKING LOTS AND CASINOS.  IT'S A DYNAMIC METROPOLIS, DESPITE ITS CONTENTIOUS HISTORY AND IT SEEMS FITTING THAT MY DEAR FRIEND, DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS SOMEHOW EMBROILED IN THIS COSMOPOLITAN FRACAS.


Casino Seminolé, the three story gambling emporium on Onasagorus Avenue recently commissioned Schoffman to design a set of blackjack cards. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that he will receive twenty-thousand Turkish lira per card, making it the most costly deck in history. Each card will initially appear as a limited edition lithograph and to date the most popular one is the Five of Diamonds.

Five of Diamonds, David Schoffman 2011


Few North Cypriots realize that the basis of his motif is the Acropolis Museum's much admired Ares in Repose. Perhaps it's a not too subtle poke, a measure for measure of sorts, an artistic reprisal for the decidedly unartful Turkish role in all those flotillas.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

REJOICING IN FRUITION


A CANNY PHOTOGRAPHER CAUGHT THE REMARKABLE MOMENT.

Schoffman accepting the Plume Puant from Shulamit Görög

UPSTAGED EARLIER IN THE EVENING BY AN ENNOBLING ALBEIT LENGTHY HOMAGE TO THE CZECH PAINTER TAVIK TRAMPOTA, MY THIN-SKINNED COMRADE DAVID SCHOFFMAN WAS PREPARED FOR YET ANOTHER PROFESSIONAL ECLIPSE.


THE OCCASION WAS THE THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL GRU RICKRACK FESTIVAL IN TIMISOARA. RICKRACK IS A VENUE FOR SOME OF THE MOST OFFBEAT WORKS OF CONTEMPORARY "ART" AND TENDS TO CAST ITSELF AS A SORT OF "ANTI VENICE BIENNALE." A TEDIOUS AWARDS CEREMONY MARKS THE CONCLUSION OF THE TWO-WEEK EVENT AND DAVID'S SHORT VIDEO LE FRISSON ABATTU WAS THE ODDS ON FAVORITE FOR LA PLUME PUANT.


THE BUZZ SURROUNDING THIS TRULY ORIGINAL WORK DID NOT PREVENT DAVID FROM EXERCISING HIS OVERRIDING PREDISPOSITION FOR PESSIMISTIC DEFEATISM. HE WAS CERTAIN THAT CLAUDINE ON BUSH STREET BY THE INIMITABLE FILMMAKING COLLECTIVE, POSSIBLE PICTURES WOULD CARRY THE DAY, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY WON THE PLUME FOUR TIMES WITHIN THE PAST SIX YEARS.


WHEN HIS NAME WAS ANNOUNCED HE WAS VISIBLY STIRRED AND GENUINELY STUNNED. SERBIAN PERFORMANCE ARTIST, SHULAMIT GOROG PRESENTED THE AWARD AND LATER DAVID CONFESSED THAT FOR YEARS HE ENJOYED LUMINOUS HALLUCINATIONS AND VIVID FANTASIES OF PLANTING A CORRUPTED KISS ON THE MILKY CHEEK OF THIS LOVELY AND TALENTED WOMAN.

Monday, June 20, 2011

FATE HOLDS NO PRIZE



MY GOOD FRIEND DAVID SCHOFFMAN AND I SHARE A DEAR MUTUAL FRIEND. ESSAYIST AND PHILOSOPHER, MARTA SONNETTO, HAS BEEN A CONSTANT PRESENCE IN BOTH OUR LIVES FOR MANY, MANY YEARS.

Portrait of Marta Sonnetto by Dahlia Danton, 2005
BORN IN SORRENTO IN 1939, SONNETTO INSCRUTABLY CLAIMED THAT SHE WAS NURSED ON LIMONCELLO AND LEARNED TO READ FROM A TATTERED, WATERLOGGED COPY OF  TASSO'S GERUSALEMME LIBERATA, THE ONLY BOOK HER PARENTS OWNED. HER MOST WIDELY READ WORK, THE 947  PAGE DISPERAZIONE O INDIGESTIONE, A THOROUGH THOUGH DEEPLY FLAWED CRITIQUE OF HER MENTOR, LEV SHESTOV, WAS ADAPTED INTO A POPULAR TELEVISION SERIES AND MADE SONNETTO A HOUSEHOLD NAME THROUGHOUT THE MEDITERRANEAN. DAVID AND I MET HER WHILE WE WERE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II. HER LEGENDARY THOUGH SPARSELY ATTENDED SPRING SEMINAR, ARRENDERSI CONTRO SFORZARSI, (PLAYFULLY REFERRED TO BY HER STUDENTS AS "CHE CAZZO E IL PUNTO") REMAINS A SOURCE OF GREAT INSPIRATION TO THE TWO OF US.

WHERE DAVID AND I DIFFER IS ON HOW BEST TO INTERPRET, OR INDEED, TO WHAT DEGREE TAKE SERIOUSLY SONNETTO'S ATTACHMENT TO THE NOTION OF INEVITABLE DESPAIR. DAVID CHANNELS HIS ANALYSIS THOUGH HIS WORK, SEEING HIS PAINTINGS AS A NECESSARY PALLIATIVE, AN ADAPTIVE CONSOLATION FOR THE INTELLIGENT RELINQUISHMENTS OF CONVENTIONAL FAITH.

I PREFER THE ANTIDOTAL BENEFITS OF BUPROPION, IMIPRAMINE AND AMITRIPTYLINE.

Thursday, June 09, 2011

FALSE MODESTY


IN THE SPRING OF 2002 MY UNFEASIBLE FRIEND, DAVID SCHOFFMAN, BEGAN WORK ON WHAT LATER BECAME KNOWN AS THE BODY IS HIS BOOK: 100 PAINTINGS, A QUIXOTIC ENTERPRISE THAT ENVISIONED A ROOM PACKED WITH MESMERIC, SYNCOPATED, ODDLY INTERRELATED, OBSESSIVELY DETAILED OIL PANELS. NOW, NINE LONG YEARS LATER AND THE PROJECT IS NEARLY COMPLETE.



OR IS IT?

WHILE VISITING DAVID IN HIS LOS ANGELES STUDIO LAST MONTH I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DISCUSS WITH HIM HIS WORK, HIS IDEAS, HIS DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENTS AND HIS MORE PLENTIFUL DISAPPOINTMENTS. SPEAKING IN BROKEN, RUDIMENTARY HIGH SCHOOL FRENCH (AT HIS INSISTENCE ... NOT MINE), IN TURN DEFIANT, DEFENSIVE, ELEGIAC AND EXHAUSTED, DAVID WAS MORE THOUGHTFUL THAN I'D REMEMBERED. 


"J'ai raté ma vie." His sad and palpable regret would have been heartbreaking had I been more sympathetic. But his claim that he somehow lived amidst a ruin of his own design, that he had mismanaged his life and squandered his opportunities rang as hollow as a chocolate Easter egg. Before me sat a man who has been fêted by monarchs, flattered by starlets, relentlessly pursued by oligarchs and executives, written about by scholars, scorned by rivals and honored by academics and he still claims that "J'ai baisé tous."


The man lacks gratitude and has lost all perspective. And now that The Body Is His Book is almost complete, with head in hand he dejectedly deadpans  "Je veux recommencer à zéro."

Start over again!!?? The paintings are ferocious in their intensity, vivid in their luster, complex in their intent and immaculate in their conception ... and he wants to start over again?  


The man must be protected from himself.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

A COURTEOUS MAN


ROME IS ABLAZE WITH THE THOUGHTFULLY SCATHING CRITIQUE OF MY GOOD FRIEND DAVID SCHOFFMAN BY THE TALK SHOW HOSTESS, SALLY VESTUTA. 
AN UNLIKELY SUBJECT FOR EDIZIONI GUCCINI, ITALY'S BOUTIQUE PUBLISHING HOUSE AMONG WHOSE RECENT TITLES INCLUDE "BARISTE E SPOSE," BASED ON A POPULAR SOAP OPERA AND THE CONTROVERSIAL MEMOIR "I MIEI TESTICOLI."


OMO CORTESE OR "A COURTEOUS MAN," THIS NEW BOOK ADVANCES THE THEORY THAT DAVID'S HIGHLY AMBITIOUS WORK IS ULTIMATELY FLAWED, NOT ONLY BY ITS GOOD INTENTIONS BUT BY THE VERY DECENCY OF THE ARTIST HIMSELF. EXHAUSTIVE IN ITS REACH AND THOROUGH IN ITS ANALYSIS, VESTUTA FOCUSES ON THE ENTIRE ENTERPRISE OF PAINTING AND ITS FATAL LACK OF CULTURAL IMPACT.


THE PRODUCT OF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BACKBREAKING RESEARCH, VESTUTA CONDUCTED OVER NINE HUNDRED INTERVIEWS AND HAD COMPLETE ACCESS TO SCHOFFMAN'S NOTEBOOKS, DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCES.

I MIGHT ADD THAT I AM INCLUDED IN A LENGTHY FOOTNOTE ON PAGE 343. IN IT I'M QUOTED AS SAYING "PHYSICAL EXILE AND INTELLECTUAL DISPLACEMENT ARE THE TWINNED DETRIMENTS TO THE SCHOFFMAN OEUVRE." 


I'M FLATTERED BY THE INCLUSION BUT HONESTLY ... CURRADO MALASPINA SIMPLY DOESN'T TALK LIKE THAT.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

PRIX DE CONSOLATION


DEAR FRIEND, ESTEEMED SCHOLAR, ACERBIC CRITIC AND GENEROUS ART PATRON FABIOLA DU PLESSIS VOEUX HAS DIED.

Fabiola du Plessis Voeux, charcoal on paper, David Schoffman 2009

For over forty years Plessis Voeux was a treasured member of the Académie de l'Art et le Climat Doux in Aubechies. Her books include Crispin van der Broeck and the Guild of St. Luke, Treize à la Douzaine: Pastry and Painting in the Kingdom of Navarre and most recently,  Aniconism and Ambiguity in the Work of David Schoffman. 

Her work, though stunningly original in its scholarship has always been popular with the general reader. Winner of the Abrahamic Writer's Circle Prize for her weekly column in La Nouvel Philologue,Fabiola had a knack for making even the most marginal and recondite readable for the layman.

She was particularly fond of my good friend David Schoffman, whose work she misread and overly appreciated. In a 2002 interview on TF1, Fabiola called Schoffman's unfinished series of paintings, The Body Is His Book, the "most ambitious artistic project since Carracci's Farnese frescoes."

She will be sorely missed ... especially by David.




Thursday, May 19, 2011

SENEX BIS PUER


IT IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH AMONG CERTAIN SECTORS OF THE ARTISTIC COMMUNITY THAT MY FAITHFUL FRIEND, DAVID SCHOFFMAN, IF NOT DOWNRIGHT CRAZY, IS DARKLY MANIACAL AND FATALLY ERRATIC.

Ab Asino Lanam, David Schoffman, 2011

HOW ELSE CAN ONE EXPLAIN THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE COMPLETION OF HIS LATEST MONUMENTAL PIECE, AB ASINO LANAM.

SHOWCASED AT THIS YEAR'S GRINDAVIK BIENNIAL, THE WORK CONSISTS OF TWENTY-EIGHT 4 FOOT SQUARE PANELS DEPICTING VARIOUS STATES OF HUMAN VITALITY AND REPOSE. ORIGINALLY INTENDED FOR THE GRAND PALAIS DE PITRERIES IN BAVIGNE WHERE IT WAS TO INCLUDE THREE TIMES AS MANY PANELS, THE WORK WAS EDITED DOWN TO A MANAGEABLE 16 BY 28 FEET.

TO SCHOFFMAN, SIZE IS EVERYTHING. I HAVE SEEN THIS WORK WHILE IT WAS IN PROGRESS. DAVID RENTED AN ABANDONED MILITARY AIRPORT HANGAR ABOUT TWELVE MILES EAST OF LAS VEGAS AND WITH THE HELP OF A SMALL ARMY OF SHOWGIRLS, DANCERS AND STRIPPERS COMPLETED NO LESS THAN 700 IMAGES IN THE SPACE OF ONLY TWO AND A HALF MONTHS.

THE MERITS OF SUCH AN ENTERPRISE ARE DEBATABLE AT BEST BUT TO THOSE OF US FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE VISITED HIM DURING THE PROCESS, IT WAS AN AWE INSPIRING PERFORMANCE OF WILL, DISCIPLINE AND MEGALOMANIA.

I ALSO GOT TO SEE DON RICKLES, THE SPINNERS AND PAT BENATAR!

Friday, April 29, 2011

INELEGANT LARCENY


ARTISTIC INGENUITY IS A VALUE I PRIZE ABOVE ALL OTHERS. PERHAPS MY MOTH-EATEN VALUES HAVE FALLEN INTO DECREPITUDE BUT MY IDEAL OF CONCEPTUAL ORIGINALITY IS ONE I STILL HOLD DEAR. MY GOOD FRIEND DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS APPARENTLY UNIMPAIRED BY THIS ADORABLY FOSSILIZED NOTION.


Interterrene, Twickenham Codex, 1786

THE IMAGE ABOVE IS FROM THE FAMOUS TWICKENHAM CODEX. THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT WHICH DATES FROM THE LATE 18TH CENTURY IS LOCATED IN THE KUHSCHEIßE ANTHNEUM IN SAARLAN. THE ENTIRE VOLUME IS RICHLY ILLUMINATED WITH WONDERFULLY ECCENTRIC IMAGES. EACH PAGE IS A SMALL UNIVERSE OF METICULOUSLY RENDERED DETAIL FULL OF COUNTERPUNCTUAL PATTERNS AND LABYRINTHINE DESIGNS.

The Body Is His Book #46, David Schoffman 2010

EXHIBIT A

THE NAKED APPROPRIATION AND INSOLENT INFERENCES IN SCHOFFMAN'S PICTORAL PURSE-SNATCHINGS ARE SLACK, DILATORY AND BENEATH THE STATURE AND DIGNITY OF THE PAINTERLY PROFESSION.

SNAP OUT OF IT, DAVID ... YOU'RE BETTER THAN THAT!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

SON HISTOIRE ET SES CAUSES


BACK AT WORK IN HIS RUSTIC, ROOMY, LOS ANGELES STUDIO, MY HOPEFUL ALLY, DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS DETERMINED TO PROVE HIS CRITICS WRONG.


Though the critics were enthralled by my modest offerings 
at the Top Tomato show, they were far less captivated by David's overwrought and torpid polyptych. In an otherwise temperate review, Didier Sepharad of La Sonnette Hebdomadaire described Schoffman as a 'visual gasbag" (gascon visuelle). Caustically, he continued with a series of ad hominem characterizations, calling him, among other things a "bloviating Saussurian" (crieur Saussurian). Not to be outdone, Francoise Shalosh, chief cultural critic of L'Image Acoustique, France's leading literary periodical called Shoffman's (sic) work "yammering carrion" (des cadavres parlants) "unfit for public consumption" (impropres à la consommation publique).

All in all David has taken it all in stride, chalking it up to anti-Semitism and the deep cultural divide between France and the United States.













Friday, April 08, 2011

Le Mauvais Rêve


Displaced and disoriented by the incommodious agonies of trans-Atlantic transit, I shuffled, sore and somnolent into a gallery awash with strangers. The April 2nd vernissage at ART/SPACE LA @ Top Tomato was an oddity of the first order.

Eboli, oil on panel, David Schoffman 2011

 My capricious colleague David Schoffman enjoyed all the companionable advantages of a welcoming crowd. I, on the other hand, was treated like a miscreant. The three-person exhibition was crocheted into an incoherent burble of argumentative images. While the hagiographic  tabernacles from the departed Micah Carpentier vied uneasily with Schoffman's large sepulchral atrocity my subtle and understated works on paper hung on the main wall with a quiet and profound dignity.


Adding to the clumsy inadhesion was a bizarrely beautiful kabuki that arrived unannounced and departed unexplained and left the stunned spectators wondering if David's famous aesthetic indecision is an act of poetry or ineptitude. 


Monday, April 04, 2011

DE METEORIS


Sixteenth century Alto-Adigian artist Ezra Sangiori, a painter whose sublime frescoes grace countless villas and chapels throughout his native Rovereto has always been a favorite of my dear friend David Schoffman.

Putti Leccacazzi, attributed to Ezra Sangiori 1588
 Though intellectually ill equipped and undisciplined, Schoffman has recently been entrusted to compile, collect and curate the first ever Sangiori master drawing exhibition. The task is difficult. Sangiori worked during a period of major landslides and throughout the centuries many of the structures that housed his work have suffered severe structural damage. Attribution has proven to be a delicate enterprise with all Renaissance artists of the Trento l'Adice but this is especially true of Sangiori. Schoffman's untrained eye has already stirred a brass clatter of backbiting controversy regarding Sangiori's famous Disegni di Putti, a series of particularly battered works recently discovered in the Vallagarina Geniza.

When I asked David why he got involved in the first place with a task so clearly over his head, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully and recited from memory: 

"Qual è quel toro che si slaccia in quella c'ha ricevuto già 'l colpo mortale".


Monday, March 28, 2011

THE CONSOLATIONS OF PAINTING (POORLY)


My somber and serious friend David Schoffman sits in his studio and reflects upon the history of hardship. Not hardship in the abstract nor hardship as a universal condition. No, Schoffman's reflections are restricted to the local, the proximal and the personal. The history of hardship to my dear friend David is the history of his own undoing and the unraveling hardships he himself has "endured."


A recent book by Lee Cuypt, a distinguished fellow at the McTeague Institute in Cambridge argues that like many creative people, David Schoffman has faced many private and professional crucibles. In his view,what makes Schoffman unusual is his unique and stubborn inflexibility and his "hubristic opacity toward introspection and growth".  Cuypt patiently takes the reader through a chronology of David's  lengthy exhibition record, from the first one-man show at Verdurin/Bloch in 1978 to his most recent at Alt/Space LA. He finds a disturbing pattern in that when faced with an aesthetic choice, David invariably opts for the least accommodating, the least accessible and as a consequence, the most hermetic. He has alienated his allies and armed his detractors with an encyclopedia of justifiable jibes and jeremiads.

David has skillfully constructed his own isolation and operates in a figurative jail cell awaiting his execution. He lives a fantasy where his contemporaries are cast as charlatans and knaves and he alone righteously upholds and maintains the Western Tradition. Professor Cuypt cleverly calls this the  "Boethius Complex" and has written an elegantly argued polemic that will remain the standard text in Schoffman studies for a long time to come.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

SIMULACRUM


"I HAVE BECOME A PROBLEM TO MYSELF."
MY DEAR FRIEND AND MENTOR, THE LATE MICAH CARPENTIER WAS FOND OF CITING THE CONFESSIONS OF AUGUSTINE.
Our Lady of Charity, Santiago de Cuba

David Schoffman's studio, Culver City, California

Beside his great works, Carpentier left little behind. It was as if he had envisioned his tragic, premature death and in preparation, denuded himself of the superfluous. Among the many relics in El Sanctuario de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, the historic basilica nestled in the foothills of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, is a small box containing the few things Micah did not consider impedimenta. Each object is doused with significance and sentimentality, or so claims my colleague David Schoffman.

I saw an exact facsimile in Schoffman's Los Angeles studio and I suspect that David might be running a neat cottage industry in Carpentier curio of questionable provenance.








Saturday, March 12, 2011

COITUS INTERRUPTUS


Hokusai had his One-Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, Hiroshige had his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road, Yahweh had his Decalogue and now, my prolific friend David Schoffman  has his Twenty-Eight Rungs of Lust Deferred, a stunning graphic tour de force.


Chaste self-abnegation is a theme that has preoccupied David for many years. His 1998 lecture "Late Renaissance Religious Imagery and the Interrupted Urges of Michelangelo," delivered at l'Università di Eboli's Istituto di Ricerca Arcane and later published in the anthology Abstemious Art & Artists (Sheleg Books, 2001), posits the theory that immaculate self-discipline between 1490 and 1600 was a common and conscious aesthetic posture. Poets and painters, in direct opposition to Aretino's rakish, libertine excesses, proposed a more temperate trope and devoted their art toward an almost Tantric pre-climactic form of fulfillment. Michelangelo's Creation being the prime example of this type of erotic adjournment. 


Schoffman's theories are what we call in France, connerie pur and I'm sure, at heart, he knows this. He apparently was up for tenure and felt the need to gild the scholarly lily.

Monday, March 07, 2011

La Pensée Sauvage


My hapless friend David Schoffman's early attempts at systematic ethnographic research were costly though radiant failures.

Kaitabhuto Figurine - Java

As a young man, Schoffman spent months at a time trekking through unforgiving terrain in far flung countries looking for uncooked, untamed artifacts. Unlike a professionally trained researcher, David left the terra firma with a series of ideés fixes hoping to find confirmation in situ.

Chief among his biases was the assertion that any societal/cultural phenomena encoded in artisanal production has, at root, an instinctive urge for chaos and disruption. This hairbrained theory came from a dyslexic-driven misreading of Marcel Mauss' Essai Sur Le Don.

After fourteen years of sporadic dysentery, vague inflammations, assorted bug-bites and several near-death experiences, David returned to the comforts of cable tv and indoor plumbing without a single original thought but with a trove of wonderful drawings.

I'm told that in the United States, graduate school is an essential step for all ambitious artists. Though this idea is mocked here in France, perhaps David would have been better served by this more conventional rite-of-passage.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

ALOOF AND FRAIL


THE EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENTS HAVE BEEN SENT OUT AND I AM PLEASED THAT THE IMAGE CHOSEN TO REPRESENT THE THREE OF US IS ONE OF MY DRAWINGS.


Carpentier of course, has no dog in this dispute but my good friend, collaborator and rival, David Schoffman, baring his irascible teeth  has decided to refight the long forgotten Guerre de Clichy. 

It was perhaps twenty five years ago in a small gallery on rue Truffaut, not far from l'Église Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles that I first noticed the stain of Schoffman's pestiferous predilection for competition. Making art for David is not a vocation but rather a furious and unrelenting blood sport. Unlike me and I dare say, Micah as well, he doesn't see his work as a sublime calling but more as an untamed cris-d'armes. Jousting with sheep and tilting at windmills David sees adversaries where others see colleagues and fellow-travelers.

We were involved in a group exhibition, similar to the one coming up next month in Los Angeles, and David insisted that the invitation list his name first and include a reproduction of one of his pieces at the exclusion of everyone else. The predictable outrage ensued and the festering scent of acrimonious discord followed the show throughout its duration and well beyond.

I understand that no small degree of excitement and anticipation surround the ALT/SPACE LA show. The pre-publicity has been generous and flattering. The public seems genuinely interested. Only David Schoffman is choked with suspicion and apprehension. Only David drowns in an absinthian dread.

Only David is capable of snatching collapse from within the jaws of luxury and triumph.

Monday, February 21, 2011

JOYCE AND NORA IT'S NOT


Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, high profile, high octane creative couples are rare and powerful phenomena. Rarer still is the durable conjugation that triumphs over egoism and sustains the participant pair into greater and greater artistic achievement.


If this blog were a work of fiction I would continue by describing the truly inspiring partnership of my good friend David Schoffman and the gifted and charming Dahlia Danton. Unfortunately the truth is rather tawdry. Friction and discord wrapped their torrid romance in a shroud of unnecessary misery. Alarming salvos of hysteria and turmoil were their preferred vernacular. Their verbal violence was legendary as was their concomitant concupiscence and perfidious disloyalty.
The imminent Los Angeles exhibition, The Gasp of Love in Terza Rima promises to be a contentious affair. I'm told that Danton will be in town for the opening and has made it plain that she fully intends on asserting a deliberately provocative presence. This may prove to be awkward. As has been amply documented, Danton and I,  like Paolo and Francesca, have been bested by the appetites and my friendship with Schoffman has scarcely recovered. The work I intend to exhibit at ALT/SPACE LA happens to be a lurid, graphic chronicling of our miscellaneous adventures. The delicate and faint-hearted would be well-advised to avoid the April 2nd vernissage.                                          
Schoffman, Danton. 2007

Monday, February 14, 2011

MATTHEW ARNOLD AND THE EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT


DOES IT SURPRISE ME THAT MY DEAR FRIEND DAVID SCHOFFMAN IS CIRCULATING ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR OUR UPCOMING EXHIBITION IN LOS ANGELES THAT EXCLUDE BOTH MICAH CARPENTIER AND MYSELF??


In a word ... NO.

David Schoffman is a joyless man. Heir to the inventors of Modernism, Schoffman is incapable of the categorical. Every assertion is twined with its adversary. Argument inhibits every assumption. Dialectic drains his capacity for the rapture of unambiguous conviction. The other-hand is tediously collated to the one-hand.

His brain is constantly in a knot of equivocation, an anagram of disquieting sophistry. It's of little import whether the issue at hand is geopolitics or personal relationships, his addiction to cognitive dissonance drains his ability to experience pure pleasure.

This explains his most glaring failures - his failed friendships, his failed attempts at securing a prestigious academic position, his failure to ascend the rungs of the artistic Nomenklatura. But it also explains why his work is so oddly original.

He agreed to our upcoming group exhibition with great reluctance. He feels his work is diminished by the presence of the work of others. It is not competitiveness - Schoffman is far too aloof to indulge in that kind of pettiness - but rather his strong preference for blundering alone, for rummaging through the archives of disinterested intellectual musings in the privacy of his own coiled and entangled brain.

David ... you are forgiven.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

IN SEARCH OF FASCIA HEINE


It is with no small degree of wavering uncertainty that I have agreed to exhibit, once again, with my odd and uneasy allies, David Schoffman and the late Micah Carpentier.


The last time I got roped into reclaiming this ancient alliance I flew in from Paris for the opening, lost my luggage, caught a nasty syncytial virus, got mugged on Melrose Avenue and was lured into an indecent and vitriolic argument with Schoffman so bitter that we haven't spoken since.

I also fell temporarily in love with the severely beautiful publisher Fascia Heine whose consummate antipathy for David's work I found fabulously stimulating.