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| David Schoffman and Dahlia Danton |
My good friend David Schoffman is an easy going chap who typically keeps his strident opinions to himself. His very public row with the glamorous Los Angeles artist Dahlia Danton has been a conspicuous and undignified exception.
They recently appeared on a panel together at the voguish Galerie des Choses discussing the legacy of Tamara Trentpole, the reclusive New Mexican artist who died last December. Known for her imaginary landscapes, Trentpole worked in complete obscurity until the Brooklyn-based curator, Spark Boon, chanced upon her paintings at a rummage sale while visiting his parents at their retirement community in Tucumcari.
A hastily assembled exhibition traveled the country and was greeted by a wide range of critical responses. Trentpole's inoffensive paintings somehow became a litmus test for one's relationship to modernism, feminism, capitalism and the role of social media in determining taste.
According to Schoffman, Danton's presentation was an "encyclopedic laundry list of politically correct platitudes woven into a fictional narrative, marinated in a toxic cocktail, laced with childish fantasy and wishful thinking."
Danton counters that Schoffman's obduracy is symptomatic of "the entrenched interests of tenured academia and east coast elitists who still designate Cézanne as the original (male) Modernist at the expense of other, equally important female and transgender figures." Danton cites the pioneering research of Orestia Shestov and her tireless attempts at the rehabilitation of American expatriate artist, Faun Roberts.
To Schoffman, this is merely a futile attempt at revising the canon of art history for the puposes of naked self-promotion. David believes that by disengenuously comparing apples to melons Danton is turning her special pleading into a political crusade.
Seeing this as a golden opportunity, the ever entrepreneurial Boon has organized a series of Danton/Schoffman debates, culminating this fall in a two-person show at New York's Spinzter and Reyes' uptown gallery.
It seems that the art world finally has it's own Ali/Frazier extravaganza. Painterly pugilists going toe to toe should be an entertaining highlight of the upcoming art season!
They recently appeared on a panel together at the voguish Galerie des Choses discussing the legacy of Tamara Trentpole, the reclusive New Mexican artist who died last December. Known for her imaginary landscapes, Trentpole worked in complete obscurity until the Brooklyn-based curator, Spark Boon, chanced upon her paintings at a rummage sale while visiting his parents at their retirement community in Tucumcari.
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| Fake Lake, Tamara Trentpole, oil on board, 1953 |
A hastily assembled exhibition traveled the country and was greeted by a wide range of critical responses. Trentpole's inoffensive paintings somehow became a litmus test for one's relationship to modernism, feminism, capitalism and the role of social media in determining taste.
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| Dahlia Danton delivering her paper "Trentpolarization" at the Scranton Center for Contemporary Art, July 2013 |
According to Schoffman, Danton's presentation was an "encyclopedic laundry list of politically correct platitudes woven into a fictional narrative, marinated in a toxic cocktail, laced with childish fantasy and wishful thinking."
Danton counters that Schoffman's obduracy is symptomatic of "the entrenched interests of tenured academia and east coast elitists who still designate Cézanne as the original (male) Modernist at the expense of other, equally important female and transgender figures." Danton cites the pioneering research of Orestia Shestov and her tireless attempts at the rehabilitation of American expatriate artist, Faun Roberts.
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| (from left to right) Oh Jardin!, Faun Roberts, 1919 and Still Life with Bottle, Cézanne, 1895 |
To Schoffman, this is merely a futile attempt at revising the canon of art history for the puposes of naked self-promotion. David believes that by disengenuously comparing apples to melons Danton is turning her special pleading into a political crusade.
Seeing this as a golden opportunity, the ever entrepreneurial Boon has organized a series of Danton/Schoffman debates, culminating this fall in a two-person show at New York's Spinzter and Reyes' uptown gallery.
It seems that the art world finally has it's own Ali/Frazier extravaganza. Painterly pugilists going toe to toe should be an entertaining highlight of the upcoming art season!
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