ART HISTORY

My dear friend David Schoffman has a problem. Unlike me and countless other artists our age, his paintings, (which are no more slight and insignificant than his peers') never really caught on commercially. After countless exhibitions in innumerable galleries he still hasn't found a reliable base of collectors.

Even our hapless mutual acquaintance, Dori Minquand makes a solid living selling his egg tempera portraits of house pets.

So David, to this day, by the sheer misfortune of having to earn a living, is reduced to the indignity of juggling day-jobs with snake-oil schemes in order to make ends meet.

But perhaps the end is near. The now infamous Art History: The Musical video which has been circulating on the internet for the past several years has gone viral! It remains to be seen how Schoffman can translate this into profit but for now, at least, he is a minor celebrity.

I hear he is even dating B-list starlets and anorexic runway models.

A FORK IN THE ROAD

Here in Paris, we are always half a step behind the artworld of New York. I rely upon my good friend David Schoffman to keep me up to date. Usually what he thinks is important is merely some idle, petty gossip but occasionally he comes up with something interesting. The recent publication of "Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of the assignment" by Paper Monument is a case in point.

Maria-Theresien-Platz, Adolf Hitler, watercolor on paper, 1906-07 (private collection)

The premise of this great little book is that the messy enterprise of educating future artists is something much more than the mere transmission of technical skills and conventional rubrics of design and form. There is an ineffable quality, a manner of thinking and interpreting the world that is unique to artists and the best way to transmit this is elliptically.  The editors collected from a wide range of art professors their favorite assignments. Included, for example, are art school staples like: "With ink and a twig between your toes draw oxygen" and "You're a callus on the big toe of a pachyderm - draw the view".

As enchanting and entertaining as the book is, nothing in it comes close to the assignment Micah Carpentier gave to David and I when we were art students at Beaux-arts in the early 70's.

As best as I can remember, it went something like this:

"Adolf Hitler was a failed artist. By an unlikely twist of fate, in 1923, instead of plotting the Hitler-Ludendorff Beer Hall Putsch he decided to apply for an M.F.A. Design his portfolio."

Unfortunately, some members of the faculty found the assignment somewhat offensive and Carpentier was summarily fired as a result. He moved back to Havana and shortly thereafter was killed under extremely suspicious circumstances. 

MISGUIDED

Rarely mentioned, seldom cited, the iconoclastic Dutch art historian Simon Stuyn holds a pivotal place in the development post-modernism. As a lecturer at the Universiteit Beeldende Kunsten in Maastricht, his centrality within the discourse is belied by the arbitrary fortunes of geography and language. What little he has published has yet to be translated into English, (his most important work, Weerzinwekkend Bewijsgrond has been adequately translated into French under the inexact title Pensées Inhabituelles), and as a militant opponent of capital punishment he refuses to travel to the United States. 

His influence on the work and intellectual development of my eclectic friend David Schoffman has been profound.

Portrait of Simon Stuyn, charcoal on paper, Orestia Shestov, 1998 (private collection)

His most accessible (though least plausible) theory is that all products of the imagination begin with what he calls "spraak tijken" or language tics. These 'tics' are unconsciously yet deliberately misunderstood and ultimately filtered into what he strangely calls "reverie artifacts" or "mijmering artefacten." Literature, according to Stuyn is a "groot tijk" or a "big tic" whereas the visual arts are "minderjarige tijken" or "minor tics." The principle condition of post-modernism is what Stuyn calls "de verschrikkelijke synthese van grote en kleine tijken," or "a maudlin medley of major and minor tics" (translation mine).

When David and I were students, new theories of European pedigree had tremendous currency among young artists eager to break from the conventions of formalism. Schoffman was taken by Stuyn, Grissold, Lacan, Jabotinsky and the entire Rotterdam School. His work has been a distillation (although a gross misunderstanding) of these ideas ever since.

I personally think that Stuyn is what the Dutch call a "heide hoofd" (loosely translated, a "bog brain') and that David's entire career has been a misguided attempt to render visual the incoherent blatherings of a third-rate theoretician.

Sadly, this explains a lot.

SCALAWAGGERY

Few remember Donna Deliquasse. Those who do, widely differ in their reckoning of this odd and mysterious woman. Some saw her as a vulnerable eccentric. Others claimed she was the Joan of Arc of the East Village, a tragic hipster who sacrificed her sanity and ultimately her life for the sake of her art.

I remember her as David Schoffman's kleptomaniacal roommate when he lived in a one bedroom fifth floor walk-up at 454 Avenue A.

Donna Deliquasse in Schoffman's downtown New York apartment in 1979

Donna was from the Midwest, though no one seems to recall from exactly where. Her accent was vaguely Canadian with long rounded vowels and clipped S's and T's. Without her coke bottle glasses she was legally blind and with her glasses she was just dangerously near-sighted. 

I remember a New Year's Eve party on Long Island somewhere - I think it was Syosset or Jericho but I can't be entirely sure - where Donna was the only sober person left standing. She insisted on driving us back to the city. We all piled into the car - David, me and my girlfriend at the time, Bebé Rongley (who had just been crowned "Miss Astoria Queens", a dubious distinction of which, as a foreigner, I recall being mightily impressed).  I swear, a raging drunk could have better navigated David's 1965 Chevrolet Bel air. I vividly remember promising the Virgin Mary that if we survived the trip in one piece (we did) I would give up alcohol (I didn't) and Ecstasy (I did) for the rest of my life.

But for all her strangeness, Donna was undeniably a promising young artist. She worked as a waitress at Max's Kansas City and it was there while quietly observing the likes of Donald Judd, Robert Smithson,  Jennifer Wazzerstein and William Burroughs that Donna developed her unique artistic sensibility. Pieces like "Four-Square Under-Over" and "Pleasure and Relief" are directly related to the Minimalist/Earthwork stream of consciousness aesthetic that simmered at the time on the east coast of the United States.

Pleasure and Relief,  Installation, Per Por Gallery, New York. 1979. Donna Deliquasse

Despite his vehement denials most of us who were around at the time saw an intimate connection between Donna's early installations and David's first published manifestos. The stridency was his but the vision was clearly Donna's. Few doubt as well, despite his assertions to the contrary, that he is the biological father of Donna's daughter, the Italian choreographer, Cathi Deliquasse-Carter.

Donna Deliquasse may have been the shoplifter but David Schoffman remains the shape-shifting swindler, peddler of embezzled ideas and dissembler of the first order .

SOLAR FLARE

By a boundless, unbridgeable margin, the most aberrantly unusual artwork I have ever seen is a recent performance piece called "Tanning" by my strange friend David Schoffman.  Staged at the Mastdarmkunst ArtFair in Blumenthal, the work drew a constant crush of collectors, spectators, curators and critics all trying in their own way to make sense of this genre-defying piece.

Tanning, day 2, David Schoffman, Mastdarmkunst ArtFair, Blumenthal, Austria, 2012. (photo courtesy of Blecker Strauss)

The work was accompanied by a book length series of essays which only slightly helped in decoding Schoffman's intricate labyrinth of references and allusions. Molecular biologist Gunther Drava wrote a marvelous piece about epithelial cell patterning in relation to Wittgenstein's enigmatic Remarks on Colour. Columbia's Sheila Stephanie Martin-Roth contributed an equally compelling chapter that traces the three-thousand year history of auto-mutilation. Beginning with the common practice of tongue splicing in 9th century BC Bithynia and ending with a colorful portrait of a Sing Sing tattoo artist, Martin-Roth places Schoffman squarely within the "body-as-book" tradition.

The basic structure of David's piece is fairly straightforward. For eighteen days, nine hours a day, he sat and stood in the outdoor courtyard of Blumenthal's 300 year old Institut für WarmesBier. Exposing himself to direct sunlight for nearly three weeks, Schoffman's bald head slowly became a parched, rust-colored dome while his unprotected eyes became frozen in a ludicrously shuddersome squint.

Videotaped by renowned fashion photographer Dominique Schlaghhosen, an edited version of the event will have an extended screening next Fall at the Ballybride Museum of Contemporary Art.

David's blisters are all nearly healed and his ability to see is improving daily. When I asked him if he felt the whole ordeal was worth the pain, not the mention the risk he shrugged and said that he felt he really had no choice. "The art world is a competitive place," he confided, "one has to stay relevant, sexy and controversial."


I suppose two out of three isn't bad.

художник

For one Georgian lari you can send a first class letter from Ipkhi to Tbilisi. Since it declared its independence shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia has been issuing its own unique postage stamps. After an unlikely series of coincidences, my newly minted philatelist friend David Schoffman found himself working for the Gori post office.

There's a drinking game, extremely popular around the port cities and fishing villages on the Black Sea. Called Bhkhnic - after the fennel soup traditionally served at Luzhkanic baptisms and weddings - the game can get pretty rowdy and even violent. It starts by people tossing old utility bills into an over-sized milking bucket. Players then reach in, grab an envelope and try to identify the figure depicted on the stamp. For example, the 4 lari express stamp has an engraving of the writer Shio Aragvispireli, the 10 lari air mail stamp depicts the opera singer Golikova Osetrina and the 50 GEL next-day-express stamp has a glowing, embossed dreamy rendering of Vakhtang Gorgasali, the sixth century king of Iberia and founder of Tbilisi.

As part of a movement directed at the reformation of the Georgian character, the Ministry of Culture has decided to discontinue all commemorative stamps, hoping to curb public drunkenness. Boris Azasatryan, under-secretary of rural agriculture and a collector of contemporary art is related by marriage to my lucky friend David.

David and Boris Azasatryan in Sukhumi, 2009

It was Boris who "arranged" for the commissioning of the Schoffman 1 lari stamp. For every stamp purchased, Boris, in a 70 - 30 split, shares 30% of the proceeds with David.


They call it a "Black Sea Back Room Bargain."

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.

WE SEE ALL THINGS IN GOD

I hate traveling with David Schoffman.

If repose and tranquility are the purpose of a trip, David will only contribute a taut imbalance, a restive agitation and an ornery, fractious element of unpredictability.

The problem is that at this point in his contemptible career he can't go anywhere without being recognized.

Occluded Corridors Installation 2009, London

Ever since his 2009 Occluded Corridors exhibition at Froomie/Mooktza's London gallery - the show that Vivianne Sürtük of The Mail famously described as"a weightless, visionary leap into the unforeseeable gone awry" - David has become, after languishing anonymously as an august, artistic éminence grise, a ridiculously acclaimed public figure.

Everywhere he goes he is flocked, fringed, beleaguered and beset by a crush of adoring admirers. This pestering rabble with their odd sense of entitlement aren't the least bit inhibited in their asphyxiating expressions of untoward intimacy. Perfect strangers think nothing of talking to him, joking with him, touching him, pinching him, caressing him and kissing him as if he were an old friend.

He claims to hate it - and on some level I suppose he does - but I've seen David play the crowd like a panpipe. Enjoy it David, while it lasts! Your great good fortune is as chimerical as a warm winter wind on rue Malebranche.

David with an adoring fan in Parc de la Villette, 2011

BERBER BACCHANAL

Rummaging through some old files the other day (Parisian winters are notorious for inspiring such mindless domesticity), I happened upon a crumpled sketch by my good friend David Schoffman.

 My hardened heart was momentarily stilled at this magical aide-mémoire. It quickly brought me back to that distant quarter of my misspent, dissipated youth.

It was 1980 and David and I were retracing Delacroix's 1832 sojourn through North Africa (or something equally noble and ridiculous). We were staying at the now derelict Hotel-De-Saint Longinus whose long lost luster had something to do with Jimi Hendrix and was always a favorite among drug addled exiles. It was winter in Essaouira and the Atlantic coast was beautiful. 

A quick search on the internet - keywords: Morocco, noir, sheesha, Gnawas - yielded the spectral snapshot below:

Quartier El Fath, Essaouira, Morocco

As far as the inscription on Schoffman's drawing -  semel in ano licet insanire*  - it was, after all New Years so I suppose it speaks for itself.

*Once a year you're allowed to go crazy

PIOUS MISBELIEF

My dear, articulate friend David Schoffman has started something of a cottage industry, traveling around Latin America and the United States delivering lectures on Micah Carpentier. I find it somewhat disconcerting that not only has he converted the memory of our beloved comrade into a piddling revenue stream but he has also decided to apply a bit of revisionist art history into the mix.

from The Song of Degrees, Micah Carpentier 1992

 I don't recall ever hearing David criticize Micah's work when Carpentier was alive. Quite the contrary. He was more of an apple polishing groupie, a fawning bootlicker, a groveling flunky, maybe even a bit of a doting yes-man. 

Never critical.

The clip below strikes me as being a bit odd. Recorded recently at Gerstein Hall in downtown Seattle, Schoffman begins his talk with a bit of gentle belligerence. I'm told by a few colleagues who were in attendance that what followed was 55 minutes of uninterrupted bile.

  Micah Carpentier Lecture, Gerstein Hall, Seattle, 2011 (fragment) by dschoffman 

Micah Carpentier

Micah Carpentier Retrospective, Musée  d'Art Contemporain, Côte-Nord

Micah Carpentier

LOWBROW MEETS LOWBROW

 

The capacious intellect of my dear friend David Schoffman is only matched by his infinite insecurities. How little he has developed both emotionally and stylistically is in full evidence with the recent publication of Behind The Grey Tail, a heavily redacted collection of David's private journals.

"Diaries," wrote the Slavic poet Rada Mladen, "are the last refuge of the ignored," and I can think of no better description of these 756 monotonous pages of self-absorbed reflection. Schoffman's "insights" give new meaning to the word ordinary. His flat, tedious prose present a near insurmountable obstacle to even the most assiduous reader. 

The only thing that kept me plowing through this turbid text were the many (I believe there are over 500) references to me.

Here are a few examples:

November 11, 1986. Paris

A low wind whispers near ... Currado and I have just returned from a short sojourn in Istanbul. I crumble under his shadow ... the littering leaves of autumn turn the sounds of Paris into a fanfare of snare drum and cymbal. Currado speaks eloquently of Gide ... I scarcely understand.

March 21, 1990. New York

Malaspina's triumph is my collapse. I am annihilated, ruined, silenced by his swaggering domination of the New York artworld. Danto, Smith, Kimmelman, Perl, Kramer, Hickey - they are all falling over themselves singing panegyric homilies, tossing perfumed bouquets at an already bumptious braggart. I can't stand it!!!!

June 1, 1992. Rome

It seems the Malaspina name still has some currency here. It got us a terrific table at La Pergola where the seared tuna with friggitelli is absolutely amazing! 

Only the most devoted Schoffman fans (are there any left?) need explore this book. Save your shekel and wait till the movie comes out. No kidding! The rights were just sold to Crepuscular Pictures for a whopping six figures with serious talk of Dee Martenelli playing the lead.

THAT'S SHOW BIZ

The Gasp of Love in Terza Rima, a tawdry exhibition I agreed to participate in with my vain and sensitive friend David Schoffman was a bit of a succès de scandale.

I'm afraid David felt a bit slighted by the critical community because ... I suppose ... 

I upstaged him.

Tant pis!

 

THE HEBRAIDIAN MANUSCRIPT (FM XXI. BUDAPEST)

What do you call a counterfeit forgery?

Tucked like a kitten in a woolsack, a strange fourteenth century document was discovered in 1983 in a dank neglected corner of the St. Vitruvius Monestary in Vitebsk. What became known later as the Herbraidian Manuscript is perhaps the oddest and most beautiful Hebrew text in the Ashkenazi world.

from The Hebraidian Manuscript, circa 1311, Courtesy of the Budapest National Archives

The authenticity of the document has been questioned for years, most recently by professor Ivan MacKaulski of Bar Ilan. In his essay The Hebraidian Hoax published last month in the Heartfelt Institute's highly regarded periodical Bididut he cites, among other things, the peculiar floral pattern which, though commonly used by Tuscan scribes in illuminated haggadot and ketubot, are rarely seen before the early 1600's. Additionally, the text, which appears to be some sort of legal contract, is written in the Havineri script, a typography popular in Bukhara and Cochin but never before seen in western Europe.

Truth be told, outside a small circle of pointy-headed intellectuals, nobody knows, much less cares about any of this obscure, hermetic Judaic scholarship. Which brings up the subject of my sneaky, sneaky friend, David Schoffman.


Schoffman is known and in fact prides himself on his uncanny ability to invent novel compositional devices using an encyclopedic reservoir of deeply original imagery. To quote Francis Peterson-Post, Dandridge-Oxford professor of Art History at Emory University, "Schoffman ... creates out of whole cloth a catalog of icons and simulacrum that never borrow, import or repeat. He alone, in the tradition of Blake, Beckett and Basnique, is an island of aberrant inventiveness and singular ingenuity."

I hate to hurl cold water over this harmless myth but the painting reproduced below, a 2004 oil on canvas by David Schoffman which was exhibited at MOCA's Sublime Particular exhibition (curated by Peterson-Post and Stephanie Borastow-Kahn) is much more than a direct descendant of the Hebraidian masterpiece/forgery.

The Wrinkled Lip of Kings, David Schoffman 2004, oil on canvas 145" x 138"

The image speaks for itself but unfortunately the liberal borrowings do not end there. Schoffman's famous Bartholomew Diptych, the massive mosaic commissioned by Grenoble International is practically a carbon copy of Batsu's Rekishi Parchment in the Okazaki Temple. At least in that instance Schoffman had the decency to cover his tracks and make his work en grisaille. Danton Was Right, the series of twelve lithographs published by the Académie Bibliothèque in 2000 was a brazen appropriation of the illustrations of Canadian artist Kaniuk Foreman.

The list goes on and on. 

David Schoffman ... J'accuse!!

SPOOKY SEX

My innocent, foolish friend David Schoffman has a weakness for cranky, crackpot, paranormal street prophets. Some who find the temporal world unsuited to their temperament find the consolations of philosophy and art adequate surrogates for their metaphysical urges. Not so my transcendent colleague David. He's always on the hook for some astral eccentric, some empyrean swindler or some sacerdotal grifter.

Hence his fascination with the beautiful and clairvoyant  Dahlia Danton.

Schoffman and Danton at the Fénelon Seance, 2010

It started many years ago.

As a young, inexperienced artist trying to make his way in Paris and New York, David visited 'Betina,' the famously beguiling reader/advisor whose small studio on Cour du Commerce St.-André was a favorite refuge for the rudderless and homesick. Tucked away between rue Saint-André des Arts and the boulevard St.-Germain, Betina's had everything one might expect in a soothsayer's lair: crystal balls, wicca sticks, tarot decks, runes, ouija boards, show globes,  Hessian crucibles,  pendulums, mystic oracles, scrying mirrors, inlaid mother-of-pearl divining rods and scores of other obscure and beautiful objects.


The proselyte Schoffman was always powerless to the seductions of paraphernalia.

He put great trust in Betina and when she predicted in 1979 his future mid-career retrospective at the Musée des Objets Oubliable, he became a life-long dewy-eyed disciple of augury and the occult. (The show, in fact, did take place, though not exactly at the predicted location. In 1998, Schoffman had a fairly comprehensive exhibition at Milan's famous Museo delle Palline da Dimenticare).

Many years have past and Betina has long since retired to her ancestral village in western Romania.  Schoffman replaced her with a series of equally charismatic and equally counterfeit heavenly hucksters, the latest being the wily Los Angeles artist, Dahlia Danton. 

A skeptic may attribute his newfound affiliation to this relative novice in the art of strange sacrament  to Danton's soft, spectral skin, her dark hair faintly scented with saffron and rose petal, her moist pink lips which she always keeps slightly ajar, even when silent and her rough throaty voice suggestive of mutual conspiracy and unearned intimacy. 

The skeptic would probably be right. 

THE SLIPPERY SONGSTER

Cagey and cryptic, my furtive friend David Schoffman almost never opens his Los Angeles studio to visitors. Curators, collectors and critics all clamor for an audience but to no avail. Schoffman's irrational and self-defeating petulance hold a staunch vigil to his caprice. Those who do manage to pierce the rampart are a priesthood of strange and select dissenters. 

So to whom does this bald head belong?

 Stopping in Los Angeles while touring with the Royal Bismark-Bialystok Radio Orchestra, Irish tenor Briac Scott Bertelsen (a mutual friend of both David and I) and his son Deverell were granted a short visit. Known for his discerning eye, wayward wit and irrepressible rendering of Ponchielli's Cielo e Mar, Bri's enviable access to Schoffman's Sanctum Sanctorum is seen by many as a provocation.

Bertelsen, whose very public profile inspires the type of speculation worthy of a Kremlinologist, is a pawn in Schoffman's perverse assault on the connoisseur class. When his recent visit was reported in the press (the anonymous source being Schoffman himself), embers of antagonism were rekindled from California to Irkutsk. The banished and the blackballed were irate at what was seen as the tenor's unwarranted access.

Deverell Bertelsen, Schoffman and Briac Scott Bertelsen, Los Angeles, 2011

When asked later about the state of Schoffman's work, the cunning crooner crowed with rapacious delight, "... not at all bad ...  menacing though inconclusive... a bit strange, yes ... perhaps even revolutionary ... perhaps not."

THE COOL, COOL SOUNDS OF JAZZ

It's rare but from time to time my purist compatriot David Schoffman agrees to allow one of his pieces to be used for commercial purposes. A few years back the State Department put one of David's "Imagined Spaces" drawings on the cover of its Third World Infectious Diseases brochure. The Times published a caricature he did (on a dinner napkin from Laconda Verde) of George Soros . He designed the wedding invitation for the Crown Prince of Lemuria (for his first marriage) and most recently he let legendary tenor Meyer Limon use a painting for his most recent CD, "Prevention Beats the Cure" on EPI Records.

Cover art for Meyer Limon's 2011 EPI release "Prevention Beats the Cure"

Limon is an interesting cat, a sufi mystic who practices Vedic Yoga, speaks fluent Ladino and does freelance consulting work for the IT division at Sony. He has played and recorded with all the greats, most recently touring southeast Asia with the Barry Berry Trio. His 2007 recording, "Buddha and Neruda" was nominated for a Latin Grammy and the current CD with Schoffman's art on the cover recently went platinum.

Meyer Limon 2010, (Photo courtesy of EPI Records)

I recently heard Limon play at Le Caveau on rue Renault and he was smokin'. I'm always stunned how some heroin addicts are able to retain their vital genius, remain active and actually thrive.

INSPIRATION FOR AMATEURS

Nibbling on a croque-en-bouche the other day with my sweet-toothed friend David Schoffman, the subject of Jewish mysticism came up. We were seated on the terrace of Felix Café am Bellvevue, a place where old Europe strains against the pressures of western gastronomical prudery. "Zurich always brings out my thaumaturgical urges," Schoffman garbled through a tongue tied with oozing caramel, "it's a place where tallis and talisman melt into an incoherent gush of personal melancholy.

study for Birkat Cohanim II, 1997

Pressed on the issue, he continued.

"I've been rereading the essays of the great philologist Mario Robitosen. He has a great quote regarding apostasy, calling it 'the midwife of staunch assurances.' I ruminated on this strange categorization for weeks until I finally realized that it was, at its very root, utterly meaningless. It was then when the future of my work became clear to me."

Schoffman's studio - Los Angeles, 2009

This piqued my curiosity and upon returning to Paris I picked up a copy of Robitosen's seminal work The Ethics of Accident and Bad Luck.

I found it almost completely unintelligible.

Don't Encourage Him!

I'm not at all sure why but there is a lingering fascination with all things Schoffman. From his sordid and sloppy personal life to his mercurial, temperamental and I dare say, simple-minded intellect, the inner workings of this most ordinary man remain vividly alive to a small sect of avid enthusiasts.

Case in point, the following:

?

IT DOESN'T MATTERHORN

The Guttenfarbenhiet, Zermatt

The Guttenfarbenhiet is one of the oldest and dustiest libraries in the world. Located in Zermatt, Switzerland, the Guttenfarbenhiet boasts the largest collection of Bezae Papyrological Manuscripts in the Northern Hemisphere.  It is said that Honoré Freiberg, author of the greatly admired though seldom read "Notes on Feigned Melancholy" (Hinweise zur Gefälschte Melancholie), holed up in the library's windowless tower, developed a fatal urinary tract infection, denying nature's call for hours on end, immersed in his study of the Septuaginta.


My good friend, David Schoffman is currently serving as scholar in residence at this historic and august locale. He is allegedly doing research on the history of 18th century Northern Italian underdrawing, a deservedly neglected area of expertise.

I doubt very much if David is denying himself the reliable pleasures of micturition, his being of more sustainable eccentricities. He would just as soon luxuriate within the library's vertiginous gardens, sipping Xellent vodka disbursed in shallow ponds of fresh Turkish cranberry juice.

Danton & Schoffman 2011

I heard from multiple sources that a turbulent tryst is raging beneath the Alps. Dahlia Danton, just "passing through," has parked her dazzling derriere at the luxury Hotel Musil in Salgesch, just a few lazy kilometers from David's delectus.  

Dahlia + David - Delectus = Distraction

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!