Donald Judd

In groundbreaking critical and theoretical writings he published in the early 1960s, Donald Judd was an early and articulate advocate for what would become known as Minimalism, though he preferred the term “Specific Objects” to convey that the primary significance of this new work was its physical existence, not any external reference. Judd studied philosophy, art, and art history at the Art Students League and at Columbia University, and his earliest works, including paintings and woodcuts such as Untitled (S.22), were simplified abstractions. But by late 1961 Judd gave up painting for sculpture— or, rather, unified the two mediums in a new hybrid: rectangular structures of painted wood or metal that hung on the wall and projected into space.

Soon he arrived at his signature modular form: a cantilevered, vertical stack of boxes or series of brackets, set like the rungs of a ladder, that project from the wall, or horizontal progressions of boxes 199 attached to a beam and arranged according to mathematical principles. Rejecting the illusionism of traditional painting, Judd explained that “actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.”

Most of Judd’s output after 1964, and much of the work of other Minimalists such as Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Dan Flavin, was industrially fabricated, absenting any trace of the artist’s hand and, with it, the notion of singularity. Judd worked with a range of materials, including steel, iron, brass, and copper, and often placed his sculptures directly on the floor to better engage the space—and the people—around them.

The deep cerulean hue and large- scale installation of the ten identical, open steel rectangles that constitute Untitled (1966) command spectatorial attention. As with this sculpture, Judd often staggered the intervals between his geometric units with precise spacing in order to emphasize what he called “the thing as a whole” rather than the constituent parts.

The Day-Glo orange plexiglass sides and top of Untitled (1968) reflect surrounding lights, creating a dramatic contrast to the dark hollow of its stainless steel interior. Whereas in traditional sculpture we are left to imagine what fills an interior, in Judd’s work what he called “actual space” is directly visible, both that of the enclosed volumes and the hollow inside.