Who was Donald Judd?
Donald Judd is a defining figure in post-war art history as one of the pioneers of the minimalist movement. His sculptures and installations questioned traditional ideas about art, in particular about the definition of sculpture. His works made from commercial materials and produced in factories opened the door to a new idea of creation but also raised several questions, such as the notions of individual authorship, the importance of the artist's "hand" and the distinctions between art, architecture and design. . Find out more about this artist in this article.
The Career of Donald Judd
In the 1950s, Donald Judd studied philosophy and art history at the Art Students League in New York. Between 1959 and 1965, he wrote for Arts magazine, having been publicly recognized as an art critic through these publications. It was at this time that he began to explore the world of abstract painting and later on to hollow and rectilinear volumes. The key to this transformation was the essay “Specific Objects”, written in 1964, published the following year in Arts Yearbook 8. The text celebrated a new type of work of art, detached from the traditional structures of painting and sculpture, with commercial materials and an emphasis on into whole, unified forms that focused on an investigation of “real space,” or three dimensions.
In 1964, Donald Judd turned to professional sheet metal fabricators and created his iconic pieces in galvanized iron, aluminum, stainless steel, brass and copper. This process effectively removed the artist from the practical and physical part, a change that would have great importance for the then emerging generation of conceptual artists, who held that ideas themselves, free of any materialization, can exist as art. In the mid-1960s, Judd produced and exhibited a large number of pieces, ranging from “stacks”, pieces hung at even intervals from floor to ceiling, and “progressions”, box-shaped forms that are installed directly into the floor. This sculptural vocabulary continued to serve as his foundation until his death in 1994.
“Material, space, and color are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material that can be picked up and sold, but no one sees space and color. Two of the main aspects of art are invisible; the basic nature of art is invisible. The integrity of visual art is not seen. The unseen nature and integrity of art, the development of its aspects, the irreducibility of thought can be replaced by falsifications, and by verbiage about the material, itself, in reality, unseen.– Donald Judd, “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Negro in Particular”, 1993
Architecture, Design and Ecology
Later, Donald Judd took up residence in Marfa, Texas, where he was drawn to the Chihuahuan desert landscape and sparse population. In both New York and Texas, he designed his homes to include permanent fixtures of his work, alongside colleagues such as Larry Bell, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin and others. The project in Marfa eventually grew, with financial help from the fledgling Dia Art Foundation, to become a large-scale, multi-building museum now called The Chinati Foundation. Throughout his life, Donald Judd championed the importance of art and artistic expression and wrote extensively on the importance of earth preservation, empirical knowledge and engaged citizenship. Donald Judd saw space as something invented, as a malleable property and as such his academic categorization was not important, space was space. Donald Judd designed glasses, plates, houses and even the interior of his Land Rover because, for him, the space was his. Small shelters in Baja would lead to later construction in Marfa and commissions in Europe. He began designing homes and structures for the desert while traveling in the Mexican state of Baja California in the summer of 1969, just a few years before he bought his first property in Marfa, La Mansana de Chinati/The Block. Later, as a ranch owner, he further developed his own architectural ideas for the desert landscape, examples of which are designs for ponds, retaining walls and living structures. His main concern in all cases was to disturb the land as little as possible, declaring: "Here, everywhere, the destruction of new land is a brutality".
The interest in archaeology, botany and anthropology is evident in the support given to ecological initiatives that have fought against the destruction of the earth by pollution, overgrazing, nuclear dumping and excessive littering. In addition, he also created architectural projects for the southwest region that attest to the care and concern for ecology and sustainability. The installations and sculptures indicate his consideration of space itself and material as essential as the industrial surfaces from which his objects were constructed. Architecture and design were also of great interest to him, and his activities extended to the preservation and reuse of existing buildings, furniture design and printmaking.
