Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse

Like most men his age, when my good friend Currado Malaspina looks honestly at the annals of his amorous life he sees one long concatenation of shame. Each humiliation has its own rancid stench and its own putrid form of debasement, but like Tolstoy's happy families they are all basically of a single sort. They are as predictable as they are unavoidable and Currado's inability to learn from experience is simply more evidence that in the end we are no more inclined toward reason than our elder ancestors, the apes.

"Women," Currado likes to point out at every opportunity, especially when there are women present who might potentially prove him wrong but invariably don't, "are the true hunters and gatherers. They hunt for the sweeter souls of man and suck until only the parched detritus remains. Then they gather all the foul and dessicated remnants and together with their saintly sisters grouse about our sapless lack of spine."

"Unfortunately, I've never found proper comfort with derelicts and whores," he goes on "though with them the remedy is plain. Instead I insist on what is inconveniently called romantic love only to learn that my oxymoronic rendering of the heart is a subject of ridicule and scorn."

Some have interpreted Malaspina's work as a hostile, sexist diatribe railing against the winds of inevitable change. Others simply see it as a tender form of soft pornography. Knowing the man it is clear to me that both readings are understandable but the truth lies elsewhere.

 Currado Malaspina's work has always been a clumsy prayer for passion in a world of politicized desire. It is a plea for parity where the combustible leverage of lovemaking is shared and held aloft like a balloon. 

To his credit, Malaspina has never conceded defeat despite his pain and his disappointment. If he has displaced his optimism with a body of work of questionable merit at least he remains a poet rather than a bitter polemicist.

I wish his current petite amie all the luck in the world.

UNWORTHY ENEMY - FAIR WEATHER FRIEND

It's ridiculous being accused of having borrowed ideas from the French painter Currado Malaspina but that's precisely what has happened!

It is absurd, I say! All one has to do is just look at the dates!

Nonetheless, Therese Baltoniere-Éstès has published a scathing and sloppy critical analysis of my alleged debt.

And in the summer issue of Impulsion Monochromatique no less!!

The Body Is His Book, # 10, David Schoffman, 2009

Above is The Body Is His Book #10, completed in late spring 2009. It is patently absurd, as Baltoniere-Éstès claims, that certain stylistic motifs were lifted wholesale from Malaspina's 2010 Palimpseste III #6 (below).  

Palimpseste III #6, Currado Malaspina, 2010

                                                               

Though it is true, as she points out, that together with Malaspina I took a research trip to Thailand in 2006 and that at that time we collaborated on several 'process drawings' based on our study of ritual Buddhist painting. And yes, it is equally true that we likened ourselves at the time to Picasso and Braque though our linkage was more akin to delirious inmates than to cubist mountaineers.

But proximity does not in itself suggest influence nor does it imply artistic larceny. If anything, the winds of appropriation were blowing in the opposite direction, as has already been pointed out by Orestia Shetov (see Les risques d'amitié: Le péril de l'influence. Éditions Dix, 2014).

I suspect that Malaspina has had a hand in this, something he does from time to time when he detects a sudden slippage of his stock. The problem is that the French are notoriously amnesic in matters of scholarship and taste and these new allegations are gaining currency in both the academy and the press.

As I begin my counter-offensive I would like to state clearly that I harbor no animus toward my good friend Currado Malaspina. As an habitual liar he is prone to self-serving fantasies and exaggerations. The fact that he has been is a state of artistic decline for the better part of the past decade should in no way suggest that I hold him in disesteem.

His desperate attempt to discredit my reputation is just more evidence (as if more were needed) that Currado's sociopathic approach to careerism will readily breech even the most basic codes of professional decency.

I pity the poor man. 

  

 

PLEASE FORWARD

What is there to make of an aging artist suddenly deciding to subject himself to the deracinating indignity of moving abroad.

Such is the case of my good friend Currado Malaspina.

Noting that Asia is the undisputed locus of our century's zeitgeist not to mention the new major hub for the buying and selling of contemporary art, Currado has forsaken foie gras in favor of fresh lychee and wontons and has moved to suburban Hong Kong. 

"It's only temporary," he assured me on the phone the other day, "I just want to be a bit closer to the global means of production."

Not that Currado has gone soft on social justice, it just makes economic sense to be nearer to where his newest work has been fabricated these past twelve years. Chinese artisans are so much more punctilious than their French counterparts with their 35 hour work week and their hallowed month of idle August. With the demand for Malaspina's Palimpseste drawings approaching pyretic levels frenzied speculation he has been forced to ramp up his production to entirely new levels.

Palimpseste #1011, Currado Malaspina, 2014

"I need to be more hands-on with the production of my work," he went on to explain, "even Rubens used to show up from time to time to touch up a nipple or an eyelid on one of his fabled portraits."

True enough and commendably diligent in this era of extra-territorial outsource.

The benefits are truly conspicuous.