Clip & save - minimalist artist Donald Judd - Brief Article

Arts & Activities, May, 2002 by Guy Hubbard

Donald Judd (1928-1994). Untitled, 1969. Brass and colored fluorescent plexiglass on steel brackets; 10 pieces, 6 1/8" x 24" x 27" each, with 6 inches in between; overall: 116 1/2" x 24" x 27". Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn 1972.

the artist

Donald Judd (1928-1994) grew up in New Jersey, not far from New York City. He enjoyed art as a boy but didn't think of a career in art until after serving in the military. Beginning in 1947, he went to art school in New York and also studied philosophy while attending college. He followed these studies with graduate work in art history.

On graduating, he taught art in an elementary school and also began writing articles for Arts magazine. In particular, his articles forced him to think carefully about the new art that was being produced and to understand it better. Later, he decided to become a full-time artist because, only by making art, could he tell people exactly how he believed it should look.

As an art student, Judd painted in a realistic style, but he came to distrust any art that used illusions of realism and distance, as well as emotion. For him, truth in art could only occur in abstraction--in objects that could be seen as the shapes they were. To achieve his goals, he created extremely high reliefs made first of all from painted wood. He even rejected the word "sculpture" and refused to give titles to his creations: Instead, he called them "objects."

Like a few artists before him, Judd designed an artwork and then had it constructed by a manufacturing company. Because it was difficult to get a perfectly finished surface on wood, he eventually had his works constructed from such materials as steel, brass and copper, as well as plexiglass. Some of his more massive works are made of concrete. Except for outdoor pieces, his objects were painted in shimmering bright colors like those used on motorcycles and showy cars.

In 1979, after having established himself as an artist in New York City, Judd decided that he wanted his children to grow up in the countryside. So he moved to the small, west-Texas town of Marfa. He bought some abandoned military buildings, put a high wall around the property, and slowly proceeded to make it into a combination home, studio and permanent display for his and the work of other Minimalist artists. He continued to live and work in Marfa until his death in 1994.

As a result of his earlier studies in philosophy and art history, Judd was constantly writing about his artistic goals. Throughout his life, he pursued these goals of unity in art through the uses of materials, space and light, including the shifting planes created by perspective. Later in his career, he also designed furniture that looks quite similar to his sculpture.

this artwork

Most of Donald Judd's large output of sculpture consists of box shapes. Some stand singly, while others consist of several boxes lined up on the floor of a large building or on fields outdoors. Some are massive and give the impression of great strength, while others--like this one--are more delicate and seem to float in space.

The idea underlying the work reproduced here was repeated numbers of times throughout Judd's long career with different numbers and sizes of boxes and with different materials such as aluminum and galvanized iron. The size and number of box-like forms in each work, however, result in each sculpture having a unique character.

This work was created fairly early in his career and consists of 10 boxes aligned vertically on a wall. Each box is exactly the same and is made of polished brass and red fluorescent plexiglass. The shining brass picks up shadows and reflections from all around it, which differ on each box, depending on the amount of light available--as students may see if they study the work carefully. The red plexiglass tops and bottoms create a glow that seems to come from within each box as well as from the wall. The result is that, while all the boxes belong together in a single composition, the position of the viewer, the character of the materials and the quality of the lighting can alter the visual effect of the work in an infinite number of ways.

A problem with this photograph is that the camera is allowing the viewer only one viewpoint from which to study the artwork, when in real life a much wider range of opportunities is present. For example, students have to imagine how the work might look when viewed from higher up or lower down--or even from above. Students also may imagine how it would look from different angles from the three-quarter view seen here that includes two sides of each box, but with more of one side visible than the other.

In fact, the number of opportunities for viewing this work is almost infinite, except for that side where the boxes are attached to the wall. In fact, just about the only way students could truly experience the viewing opportunities of this kind of artwork is for them to make one of their own and look at it from a variety of positions.