When artists sell their work to other artists the transaction is always fraught with unanticipated consequences. While it could be read as the supreme compliment, especially if the work in question is rare and costly, it also could be rendered as an act of subterfuge or even of outright aggression.
It's to the later condition that the sale of my good friend David Schoffman's large 2002 oil on linen Rattling Traffic No. 5 belongs. The profligate buyer (the painting at the time was valued at around $10,000) was none other than the Los Angeles artist Dahlia Danton.
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| Dahlia Danton in front of Rattling Traffic No. 5 (date unknown) |
The Rattling Traffic Suite was last exhibited in it's full completed sequence in 2007 at Delia Cabral's legendary Santa Monica Gallery. I remember it well for I too was included in the exhibition together with the late Cuban maestro Micah Carpentier.
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| Art dealer Delia Cabral |
Not included in the exhibition, a fact that was duly noted in the press at the time, was the comely Ms. Danton.
Bitter murmurings about some alleged 'boys club' rippled through the various sancta sanctorum of Los Angeles' feminist art community and there was even talk of a boycott, though it never really got off the ground.
The show nearly sold out and David's work was dispersed among a few well-known collectors and, if I remember correctly, a small, regional museum of contemporary art in the Mexican State of Sinaloa.
Now, as Schoffman's mid-career retrospective is in preparation, the highly anticipated reassembling of the complete Rattling Traffic will be a terrific opportunity for scholars, students and critics to accurately trace the unusual arc of David's development.
Unfortunately, Danton refuses to let go of number 5.
Citing issues of safety, conservation, liability and even the threat of terrorism, Danton adamantly declines to cooperate. She won't even allow the publishers of the catalog to visit the picture in order to document it.
What is she hoping to prove! Why would she deprive us of the comprehensive overview of Schoffman's work that the public so ardently craves and desperately deserves?
Is she fearful that her own work will dim by comparison? Is she alarmed at the prospect of being seen as hopelessly derivative, a mere callow disciple pathetically laboring under the awful shadow of genuine genius.
Or are the terrible rumors actually true and she took the painting to Burning Man, stripped down to her underwear and while her boyfriend stood on six foot stilts juggling billiard balls she incinerated it in a huge bonfire together with an effigy of Francis Picabia and 150 back issues of Art in America ?
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| Shifting Ship #2, oil on canvas, Dahlia Danton 2013 |
Is she fearful that her own work will dim by comparison? Is she alarmed at the prospect of being seen as hopelessly derivative, a mere callow disciple pathetically laboring under the awful shadow of genuine genius.
Or are the terrible rumors actually true and she took the painting to Burning Man, stripped down to her underwear and while her boyfriend stood on six foot stilts juggling billiard balls she incinerated it in a huge bonfire together with an effigy of Francis Picabia and 150 back issues of Art in America ?
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