DAVID SCHOFFMAN (OVER)EXPOSED!!!

There's been much mystery and speculation surrounding the life and work of my dear friend David Schoffman. I receive letters, texts, emails, IM's, telegrams and even the occasional telephone call all expressing interest in the oeuvre of my elusive comrade.

J'en ai marre!!

To put a kibosh on all these intrusive reminders that my colleague David has a greater purchase on the collective imagination than I do, I set my studio assistant on the task of compiling all the strange and varied projects that Schoffman is responsible for.

Below you will find an undoubtedly incomplete list of his uneven antics with the appropriate links.

Good luck!!

Podcast 

The Podcast, Timmy Black Presents: The Lives of Contemporary Artists can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Anchor and various other platforms.

Websites

Paintings (Schoffman) 

Currado Malaspina  

Video

YouTube channel 

Literature

Currado Malaspina’s author page on AMAZON  

Currado’s essays published on ThriveGlobal 

Instagram

Instagram 1 – (the art collective PDP™)  

Instagram 2 – (Currado Malaspina)  

Instagram 3 – (also Currado Malaspina)  

Instagram 4 – (Dahlia Danton)  

Instagram 5 – (Spark Boon) 

Instagram 6 – (Timmy Black)  

Blogs

 Blog 1 – (about Schoffman, written by Currado Malaspina)  

Blog 2 – (about Currado Malaspina, written by David Schoffman)  

Blog 3 – (about Dahlia Danton, written by Danton)  

Blog 4 – (about Faun Roberts, written by Orestia Shestov)  

Blog 5 – (by Sofia Lagrimar)  

Blog 6 – (by Clement Digby) 

Blog 7 – (about Micah Carpentier by his nephew, Ezra)  

Blog 8 – (about Micah Carpentier by another nephew, Roberto)  

Blog 9 – (another one about Schoffman by Currado Malaspina)  

Blog 10 – (by Spark Boon)  

Blog 11 – (another one by Spark Boon)   

Blog 12 – (Spark Boon’s drawings)  

Blog 13 – (about Boris Lemon, written by Boris Lemon)  

Blog 14 – (another one about Currado Malaspina, written by Schoffman)  

Blog 15 – (Horoscopes from 2016, by Yoyota)

Miscellaneous   

You can also find David Schoffman, Dahlia Danton, Currado Malaspina, Spark Boon, Micah Carpentier and The Plausible Deniability Project on Facebook

You can find short stories by David Schoffman, Spark Boon, Sophia Lagrimar, Currado Malaspina and Dahlia Danton on Short-Édition - https://short-edition.com/en/

You can find Currado Malaspina on LinkedIn and Spark Boon on Twitter

MY SPOTIFY

While listening to my playlist, a roster of French chanson, Death-Wish Metal, Indonesian Gamelan ballads and K-Pop I stumbled upon a strange and unique podcast.

 TIMMY BLACK PRESENTS: THE LIVES OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

Two episodes about my good friend David Schoffman appeared and, wouldn't you know it, I, Currado Malaspina, was mentioned in them as well.

Please listen:

25 years ago, when my good friend, David Schoffman moved to L.A., he settled in the quaintly treacherous neighborhood of Venice.

Much has changed since then. Most notably, the ease in which one is able to get Thai food delivered.

For a more in depth analysis of these dramatic changes, listen to Timmy Black's most recent podcast! 

 

A GREAT MIND TAKES A POWDER

A welcome look back at our shared history. My good friend David Schoffman and I go a long way back. Part of me regrets the fact that he recently announced his retirement from painting in order to devote himself, full-time, to his other failed and under-realized artistic endeavors.

I wish him the best of luck but if past is prologue, his hefty Book of Failures will only become more bloated.

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 ...

BOOK REVIEW

My dear friend David Schoffman is a fraud.

Maurice Lanamm, watercolor by Dahlia Danton, undated.

At least that's how the art historian Maurice Lanamm sees it.

In his new discourteous   biography, (Slighted Promise: The Life and Work of David Schoffman), Lanamm paints an unflattering portrait of a man known mostly for his dignified benevolence.

In Lanamm's telling, Schoffman is a pretentious windbag who spends his time painting, teaching and reading long books with complicated sentence structure all in order to manicure his 'brand' and advance his 'career.'

Professor Lanamm is at his worst when he imagines David compiling a list of epigrammatic bullet points and elevator pitches that can be hissed whenever opportunity knocks. 

 " - contemporary art's disruptive pioneer."

" -  formalist torchbearer and thought-leading artisan."

" - monastically hermetic yet democratically demotic ."

" - bespectacled, erudite, intellectual urbanite."

" - refined epicurean and impenitent sybarite."

This ridiculous catalog goes on for pages creating a groaning omnibus of diminishing caricatures.

Lanamm tries to uncover what he sees as the transparent nature of Schoffman's insincerity. He is relentlessly prosecutorial, having thoroughly researched old interviews, unrecorded lectures, critical essays, personal correspondences, emails and text-messages. His critique is particularly stinging in light of the fact that Lanamm was once one of David's star students.

Lucija Candidat

Having been a confidante for so many years gave Lanamm the kind of access most scholars only dream of. He begins the book with an intimate account of Schoffman's first wife, the poet Lucija Candidat. 
Though his indiscreet disclosures are entertaining, Lanamm allows these Page Six aperçus to lead him down dark alleys of pop-psychological speculation.  He tells a story of Lucija wanting to move to a bigger apartment, finding their one-bedroom Manhattan walk-up a bit too cramped and inconvenient. David saw it only as "another new place to be tired in" and delayed the process interminably. Lanamm sees this as a leitmotif for David's entire career, citing "his negative, judgmental élan vital that perpetually denuded his empowerment, decelerated his velocity and denied the possibilities for extraordinary breakthroughs." 

Professor Lanamm's book is full of these silly conjectures. His flat prose and meaningless claptrap seldom get past the academic laugh-test. In his lengthy footnotes he often inserts himself into the story, opining on David's personal life like an omniscient narrator. (At one point he urges Schoffman to leave his current wife, Feydeau McCloyen, move to Paris, find a mistress and devote himself to watercolor!) 

It's unclear what Lanamm's motives are. David is a soft, somewhat inert target who, in his near egoless detachment from his own 'personal development' (could this be Schoffman's true 'brand'?!) remains impervious to any attempt at character assassination.  

Maurice Lanamm is a hack who hides behind dubious credentials and a ramshackle institutional forum that allows flimsy scholarship to go unchallenged.

David Schoffman, on the other hand, is a gentle dreamer whose solid accomplishments and unimpeachable integrity remain punishable offenses in the eyes of those who trade in campy, callous, cultural criticism.

Overall, however, the book is a raucous page-turner with juicy tidbits in every chapter. I highly recommend it!

DO UNTO OTHERS

My dear friend, David Schoffman, lives in a city that discourages walking. If you're traveling by foot in Los Angeles, unless you're with a dog, you look suspicious . The idea of a pedestrian's "right-of-way" is a form of automotive noblesse oblige and should never be taken for granted.

Walking at night presents a series of hazards of even greater complexity and the innocent flâneur is often mistaken for a tramp. 

As a European I find this all very strange. 

Many people believe that the cultivation of true friendship is nearly impossible in L.A. because most personal relationships are predicated upon  mutual self-interest. Some attribute this to the culture of Hollywood but I think it's because of all the driving.

Think about it.

Cars are like sovereign nations vying for position, power and prestige.

For the most part they all get along, not out of affection but out of convenience. The rogue road warrior typically receives his comeuppance through the intervention of a militarized arbitrator with a note pad. This way the peace is maintained and the free flow of individuals and goods remains stable and relatively secure.

In Los Angeles, people behave like their cars and see human interaction as an iteration of traffic. I won't get in your way so long as you agree not to get in my way and if we both exceed the speed limit at approximately the same rate, together we can advance our cause toward mutual satisfaction. 

My eccentric colleague David, however, insists on

strolling and likewise expects more from his acquaintances than mercenary social arbitrage. He doesn't care if people like him, he just doesn't like being seen as a professional asset.

You see, deserving or not, Schoffman is a distinguished artistic eminence. He's something of a southern Californian doyen whose range of endeavors puts him into contact with the powerful and the pretty. As a result, everyone wants to be his buddy.

He wants nothing of that.

Though occasionally he'll make an exception.

Dahlia Danton with David Schoffman. Date unknown