MICAH CARPENTIER'S SONG OF SONGS

 

Together with my good friend, David Schoffman, I have found myself involved in all manner of dubious enterprises. I regret most of them. Linking my fate to the notoriously unreliable Los Angeles painter has caused irreparable damage to my credibility.

That said, there are some lingering advantages to our collaborations. For one, I have gained significant access to the highest echelons of Southern California's art politburo. To most North American arts professionals, Paris remains a provincial backwater, best relegated to Instagram-ready vacation photos. Thanks to Schoffman, I'm almost a household name among the L.A. artsy cognoscenti.

Another benefit has been my lasting affiliation with the Plausible Deniability Project™. Our latest project has been the publication of Micah Carpentier's Song of Songs, a beautiful facsimile of an original artist book by the legendary Cuban artist. Edited and annotated by Dahlia Danton, the book includes tributes by both David and I. 

In all modesty, my essay is much more interesting.

STUBS

My dear, dear friend David Schoffman is at a loss. 

Devoid of clever ideas, lacking both purpose and patience, innocent of the tactical conditions for conventional for success, he has taken to wandering the streets of Los Angeles with a folding stool, a miniature sketchbook and a pocketful of pencils and erasures.

He's been preparing for this moment his entire career. While he knows that his best work is behind him, he also knows that his legacy is secure. His magnum opus The Body Is His Book: One-Hundred Paintings is recognized, in the words the New York critic Spark Boon as "... one of the monuments of post-modernist Romantic revisionism." 

Scholars (and even Schoffman himself) have debated for years whether Boon's characterization is a favorable rendering of this complex polyptych but all seem to agree that this legendary work of art includes a lot of different colors. 

The Body Is His Book #79

 

A MAN GROWS OLDER

Having taken stock of over four decades of professional artistic activity, my good friend David Schoffman is feeling the melancholy tremors of mortality.

No longer considered, in the words of critic Spark Boon, the "best of the bohemian bêtes-noires," he has settled, of late, in his vacation home on Fire Island, reading true-crime novels and making small, naked self-portraits.

It's a sad decline but wholly appropriate. David never really had what it took to truly stir the public's imagination. His work was too serious, too hermetic, too intellectual, too metaphysical, too simple, too complex, and too early.    

 

THE PAINTINGS OF DAVID SCHOFFMAN AS IMAGINED AT A DYSTOPIAN KARAOKE BAR

My dear, dear North American friend David Schoffman fashions himself as an intellectual. At every opportunity he flaunts his (extremely) limited erudition. His tastes, though catholic, are predictable. At best I'd consider him a charmingly pretentious dilettante.

He can, however, carry a tune (barely).

I do love this video.

 

LOST IN TRANSLATION

My good friend David Schoffman is your typical opinionated, over-educated, urban American artist. That is to say that unlike my colleagues here in Paris, Schoffman is loud.

You see, nobody is more obnoxious, yet more stimulating than a French intellectual. By contrast, in the United States, 'serious' culture is always inflected with wry references to populist entertainment. One could easily survive a dinner party in Paris without being familiar with Lupin but it is practically inconceivable spending an evening with a bunch of New York highbrows without anyone making a reference to Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Schoffman may very well be the only exception to this rule yet with certain qualifications. Though I doubt  David could tell the difference between Beyoncé and Adele he is a fanatical enthusiast of the viral podcast Timmy Black Presents: The Lives of Contemporary Artists.

I find this baffling.

PDP™ · The Lives of Contemporary Artists: Episode 115

NON-FICTION FOR A NON-ENTITY

When he first mentioned the prospect of 'retirement' my first reaction was glee. 

Artists are notoriously competitive. Often in a mean-spirited way. Though we have been friends and colleagues for over 30 years, my good friend David Schoffman always makes me uneasy. I could never rid myself of the feeling of being judged. Schoffman makes me feel like a fraud. He makes me feel stupid.

By any conventional metric, his career must be seen as insignificant to the point of non-existent. When I compare my professional stature with his it's like comparing Michael Jordan with an overweight, 40-year old suburban dad playing horse in the driveway. And yet David makes me feel so dreadfully insecure.

So when Schoffman confided in me his plans to hang up his brushes for good I thought it would be a good opportunity to find out if there were others out there who also felt the sting of his silent rebukes. That is the genesis of 

I Finished Knowing.

I asked a selected group of Schoffman's closest friends to write a short encomium for publication. I was struck by the lack of enthusiasm that greeted my repeated requests. It took over two years to get 12 responses. Most were lukewarm. Some were overtly hostile.

I felt vindicated.

I urge all of my readers to buy the book because they include about 15 beautiful watercolors by me.

 

WILL HE BE MISSED?

Not a lot happens in the art world in the summer. I suppose that might be why my good friend David Schoffman waited till late June to announce his retirement.

It's hard to discern what exactly is his motive.

That he will no longer visit his studio every day is inconceivable.

He has no hobbies and enjoys no diversions.

Perhaps it's just a ploy to promote his new book.

Anyway, at least he continues to delude himself into thinking that people actually care.