Sunday, November 6, 2011

Buttholes and Cake Decorating

by Robert Boyd

Douglas Crimp
Douglas Crimp

Noted art critic Douglas Crimp spoke at the CAMH on Saturday. Crimp was there to talk about Donald Moffett, who has a big exhibit there. I was a little worried about what the talk would be. This guy had been an editor of October, so there was a grave danger that the talk would be full of post-structuralist jargon. But he was quite accessible, if not a bit professorial. His professorial nature was most amusing when he was talking about the various holes in Moffett's paintings. He explained that they were like "buttholes"-- but they weren't just buttholes. That got a big laugh. Imagine your Shakespeare prof talking about buttholes.

Also, he explained how Moffett painted his paintings. Now before I reveal Moffett's technique, let me say that I thought Moffett had made "paintings" by gluing aluminum foil on different configurations onto the canvas. But no, Moffett had trained to be a cake decorator, and realized he could use cake decorating tools to create interesting textures with his paint. The silvery quality is because he uses (I assume) silver paint.


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