TRAGIC BUT NOT TIMELESS

My mother used to say that if you didn't have anything nice to say about a person it's best to keep one's mouth shut and refrain from saying anything at all.

My mom is a service rep for a mid-size electronics company so I suppose she has a point but if you're a New York art critic with any intention of paying your rent on time you may want to consider a few other options.

Dahlia Danton

Dahlia Danton over at The Harps of Heaven has, for some reason, assigned to me an assessment of the painter David Schoffman. At first I thought to myself, shouldn't she hand that over to someone in L.A.? Sure I know the guy's work, who doesn't? But I come in with a distinct regional bias against him, and she should know that.

Anyway, apparently they're planning an entire issue of The Harps devoted to Schoffman and I suppose she wants to throw all of us scribes into the soup.

So here goes.

First of all, I know he means well. His 100-paneled polyptych is probably one of the most ambitious and heroic painterly endeavors attempted these days. But that, of course, isn't saying a hell of a lot.

Yes, he's smart and yes, he is probably the most accomplished colorist of our day but this is the age of the sight-bite and complexity is just oh, so, 1950's.

I'm surprised his career has any traction out there in Los Angeles. Schoffman's labor intensive, obsessively detailed, lush disquisitions on pictorial space and form are so mismatched with the world of fast-paced show biz entertainment.

Sure, I know that Schoffman has a side career as an actor but honestly, he's no Marlon Brando by any stretch of the imagination.

And speaking of the imagination, why does he insist on being so obscurely original. Post-modernism is all about the derivative pastiche and when someone like Schoffman comes around with this sui generis nonsense it throws everyone into confusion.

At the end of the day, Schoffman, if he belongs anywhere at all it's at the end of the last century and even there he's about as fitting as a Châteauneuf-du-Pape with  a bag of flaming hot cheetos.

So forgive my candor when I say that the deep, beautiful and provocative work of David Schoffman is well past its sell by date. Put one of his images on an AARP tote bag but please, please, please, keep them out of the art galleries.

Or at least keep them in California.