BREAD AND WATERCOLOR

When my dear friend David Schoffman appeared recently before a closed door hearing of the House Subcommittee on the Arts and Humanities the wags were quick to point out that he brought along two attorneys - one civil and one criminal.

The presumption of guilt is an unavoidable consequence of lawyering-up. There were no subpoenas, no formal charges and even in the absence of incriminating innuendo, the speculation surrounding David's testimony had a quicksilver scent of charred flesh.

You really find out who your enemies are when your back is against the wall and your painting arm is tied behind your back.

Luckily for David, any hot water he might be in has been easily eclipsed by the Russia Scandal. Besides, who really cares about the matters before an Arts and Humanities investagatory panel.

David would have loved to have held a press conference to clear the air but the press was otherwise disposed. And from a career perspective, bad publicity is by definition good publicity so he was hoping for at least a short hatchet job on NPR.

He had his young colleague Spark Boon tweet about it but Boon has a paltry 900 followers.

 So the affair has basically remained local and the alliances have broken down along partisan lines.

Those disposed toward liking Schoffman and who admire his work are supportive and envious. Those who dismiss David as a derivative lightweight are sharpening their daggers, praying for the worst. There's even a Boycott and Divestment movement that is actively working with curators and collectors, urging them to sabotage his resale value. At a recent board meeting at the Museum of Modern Art a resolution was proposed that would essentially prevent any further acquisitions of David's work.

How this will all turn out is anybody's guess. Till they find a smoking gun, everything is still in the realm of factional speculation.

I know he's growing tired of the whole thing, frustrated that social media has basically treated this rare opportunity like a dangling participle. I heard he may be hiring an intern soon to act as his spokesperson.

A SHORT HISTORY OF IDEAS

Unfailingly, for the past half century, my good friend David Schoffman would begin each day by reading the failing NewYork Times. It started as a habit and with time it turned into a talismanic ritual. For David, incidents and events, even if witnessed with his own eye, did not verifiably occur until it was reported in the Times. For this superstitious reason and above the reasonable objections of the various interested parties, each of his six marriages were announced in the Sunday Style section.

As a native of Queens, it should come as no surprise that the current American Commander-in-Chief shares a similar obsession with the "paper of record".  And the affinities don't end there. New Yorkers, as if by birthright, assume that bloviating self-aggrandizement is a perfectly unassailable exercise.

Schoffman is no exception.

With a face as stern as an undertaker he will assert to anyone who will listen that he, David Schoffman, is the greatest painter of the age.

"I am the Titian of our time," is his standard boast and it would no doubt prove to be a provocative claim if today's art loving public knew who Titian was. If Schoffman had a shred of marketing savvy he would be comparing himself to Banksy instead.

But of course, that too would ring hollow to our current crop of InstaChatters who might be forgiven if, upon reaching their maturity are no longer able to remember the difference between a Banksy and an Ivan Boesky.

As a Parisian I concede, that to me, the American popular imagination is something of a mystery. Nonetheless, let me submit an innocuous piece of speculation, (and here, I too, find common ground with the current occupant of the Oval Office).

The failing New York Times has indeed failed. It has failed to lift young readers by turning them into skeptical, curious cultural curmudgeons. They seem to have left a fallow furrow only to be cultivated by others less intellectually circumspect. And it is right here where the Trump genius is most manifest.

He has recognized that ours is an age of luster and simplicity. Inoculated from nuance, my American friends have resuscitated the grinning deer from their collective headlights and have turned it into a golden calf. 

Given the choice, perhaps I too would choose the high-fat hedonism of binge streaming to the weighty and excoriating implications of David Schoffman's gravely serious painterly manifestos.

Fortunately, I still live in the land of Sartre and Camus, Lyotard and Baudrillard, Diderot and Derrida, Barthes and Foucault.