FOREIGN AFFAIRS

It's interesting how quickly one's best intentions can go awry in so many unpredictable ways. 

At the behest of the State Department's Cultural Emissary Program (SDCEP), my good friend David Schoffman was sent to Asia to conduct life drawing workshops at several appropriate venues.

Leaving aside Schoffman's questionable credentials, his amiable, easy going California style seemed, on the surface, like the perfect diplomatic fit.

Things went reasonably well, even in Bahrain where it was tough to parse a pectoralis through the intervention of a blackened veil. David unquestionably has a way with people and can usually charm his way out of knotty social blunders.

Which is why it was somewhat astonishing that in one communist country, (which for security reasons must remain nameless), David ran so afoul of his hosts that he was arrested and tried as an American provocateur.

It seems that for some obscure doctrinal reason the government insists that forearms and hands should be rendered with robust proportional exaggeration.

They say it has something to do with promoting the noble virtues of manual labor. 

Inadvisedly, David drew a few innocent corrections on a sketch by the son of some well-placed party functionary. He may have even raised his voice a bit though on this point the witnesses at the trial were divided. He was found guilty of "pedagogical intimidation," a serious offense in some parts of the world, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Luckily a friend of mine is a big time vinter and well connected with some of the party elites. Two cases  of Ducru-Beaucaillou 1988 (€7078) later, Schoffman was flying business class to Hanoi trying to sell his story to HBO.

Artists are always misunderstood.