Range
In the 1980s and ’90s, Beck and Moffett were deeply engaged in countering the often cruel politics and policies that attended the AIDS crisis. For these drawings—their sole collaboration—Beck provided Moffett with one of his signature shot-through notebooks. On its inside pages and covers, Moffett traced kaleidoscopic patterns around each puncture with graphite and fudge. The designs speak to Moffett’s abstract painting practice while also emphasizing the perversity and violence of the gunshot holes—puckered wounds that evoke a particularly fraught, and perhaps beautiful, scatological aperture of the body.
Artwork Details
- Title: Range
- Artist: Donald Moffett (American, born San Antonio, Texas, 1955)
- Artist: Robert Beck (American, born Towson, Maryland 1959; after 2007 known as Robert Buck)
- Date: 1997
- Medium: Fudge and graphite on board
- Dimensions: 12 × 9 in. (30.5 × 22.9 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Cowles Charitable Trust Gift and Van Day Truex Fund, 2013
- Object Number: 2013.585.10
- Rights and Reproduction: © 1997 Robert Beck and Donald Moffett
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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