Artists are a sectarian bunch. They defend their fictions with an unguarded vehemence. They cling to the conceit of their own election. Their alleged agency is like a prized heirloom of conveniently forgotten provenance. Oh, how they gasp at their imagined stature among the Titans!
That they do so is only evidence of an existential terror for as Leopardi famously noted, "Man is stupefied to see in his own case that the general rule is shown to be true."
That they do so is only evidence of an existential terror for as Leopardi famously noted, "Man is stupefied to see in his own case that the general rule is shown to be true."
In the case of my dear deluded and paranoid friend David Schoffman the general rule is that artists, or for that matter people in general, can and do learn to draw adequately well. Somehow, he has convinced himself that he alone is the last honest draftsman, the lonely standard bearer of line, the Cronus of color, the Cerberus of form.
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| Seeing the World at a Slant, watercolor and ink. |
His sketches can indeed be interesting, but just that and no more. They bare his stamp the way bedsheets carry the imprint of a sleeper - unique, yes, but not terribly so. Swift quirky scrawls, a few quick splashes of muted color, a clever arrangement of solids and voids and voilà a Schoffman!
Unfortunately he feeds on the fermented honey of highly inflated critical acclaim. The recent Figura y Forma exhibition at El Palacio de los Tres Encantos in the newly renovated downtown of Logroño featured no less than fifteen of David's inkwash hors d'oeuvres. One critic gushed about the "damp, lacerating reservoir of feverish lubricity in every stroke of the pen" ("húmedo, lacerante depósito de lubricante con fiebre en cada trazo de la pluma"). Another described the drawings as "curt, clever cadenzas of chiaroscuro and a pageant of plangent depictions of hot flesh" ("cadencias inteligentes rápidos de claroscuros y un desfile de representaciones plañidera de carne caliente ").
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| Danton and Schoffman in Los Angeles, 2013 |
Schoffman has now persuaded himself that the jewel of genius is his and his alone. The delusion is so complete that he has accused his fellow Los Angeles artist, Dahlia Danton of the larcenous lifting of his linear ideas. He thinks he owns these shallow contraptions whose only virtues lie in their playful competence and quaint conventionality.
Danton, to her credit, does not bother to attach any blathering hyperbole to her copious cache of sketches. When asked about the work by Vernissage editor Dolphy Cane, she confessed to "dashing them off at bus stops, in taxis and whenever I have a few idle moments where I need to pass the time."
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| Brueghel's Meat-Mill, pen and ink, 8 x 6 inches, Dahlia Danton, 2013 |
Bus stops and taxi!?
In Los Angeles???
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