HOLY MOSES!!

For far too many years I've endured the pious outrage of my good friend David Schoffman. Long excluded from the higher echelons of the art world, David has made it his habit to cloak his failure with the tattered cape of class struggle. Unable to find a date to the ball he loudly decried the party as corrupted.

How quickly indignation turns into obsequiousness.

Now that my dear colleague has chosen to face mortality with something more circumspect than a shrug he sees his legacy in grave danger of becoming an object of mockery.

Or worse - pity! 

Schoffman, oil on panel, 2016

Recognizing that his own oeuvre is mired in mediocrity he has thrown his beret, his brushes and his sticky block of extra fine Japanese printing ink into the dust bin of 'also-rans.' It is into the den of thieves where he is finding comfort, meaning and money! Schoffman has become an art dealer!! 

Yermi Moïse, date unknown

And not just a simple, shingle at the ArtFair dealer but rather a specialist with a rarified patina of controversial revisionist scholarship (read 'branding'). David's corner is the much overrated, between the wars, École de Paris. Far too late in the game to deal in Soutine, Modigliani, Kisling, Pascin or even Mané-Katz, Schoffman has zeroed in on the lesser known Yermi Moïse. 

Born in Akopinsk in Kharkov Province, Moïse moved to Paris in 1913 in order to avoid being drafted into the Tsar's army. Penniless, he struggled to survive through a variety of marginal trades and harebrained schemes. Most notoriously, he once posed as an exiled prince named Sergei Sergeyevich Goshen Bulgari successfully fleecing the cosmetics heiress Laurance De Bitont out of more than 400,000 old francs. Always one step ahead of the gendarmerie, Moïse disappeared into the bohemian labyrinth of Montparnasse where he met Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso.

Never one to stay in one profession for too long and finding Modernism much easier to master than pickpocketing, Yermi tried his luck as a painter.

Yermi Moïse, oil on canvas, 1924

Yermi Moïse, oil on canvas, 1927


I believe that in Moïse, Schoffman has found a kindred spirit. Both are short on talent, long on ambition and deeply ambivalent about the ethical fallout of their hapless misadventures. I wish my friend all the luck in the world.

Honestly, the work of the mercurial Yermi Moïse is no better and no worse than most of what is bought and sold today.

Yermi Moïse, oil on canvas, 1927
I even find his paintings oddly touching ...