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Born: 1928
Died: 1994
Summary of Donald Judd
Donald Judd was an American artist who rejected traditional painting and sculpture in favour of a notion of art based on the item as it exists in its surroundings. Judd’s work is part of the Minimalist movement, which aimed to liberate art from the Abstract Expressionists’ reliance on the painter’s self-referential trail in order to create artworks free of emotion. To achieve this, artists like Judd created works that consisted of single or repetitive geometric forms fashioned from industrialised, machine-made materials that were devoid of the artist’s touch.
Judd’s geometric and modular works have been criticised for their apparent lack of content; however, it is this simplicity that calls into question the nature of art and positions Minimalist sculpture as a contemplative object, one whose literal and insistent presence informs the process of beholding.
Judd’s objective was to create things that could stand alone as part of a larger field of image production and didn’t refer to anything other than their own physical presence. Be a result, his and other Minimalist artists’ work is sometimes referred to as literalist.
Unlike classical sculpture, which is put on a pedestal to distinguish it as a piece of art, Judd’s works are placed directly on the floor, forcing the audience to confront them in their own, material reality.
To give his works an impersonal, factory aesthetic, Judd combined the use of highly finished, industrialised materials like iron, steel, plastic, and Plexiglas – techniques and methods associated with the Bauhaus School – with the use of highly finished, industrialised materials like iron, steel, plastic, and Plexiglas – techniques and methods associated with the Bauhaus School. This distinguished his work from that of the Abstract Expressionists, whose emphasis on the artist’s hand gave their images a confessional, intimate tone.
Judd frequently exhibited his work in a serialised format, a method that spoke to both the realities of postwar consumer society and the standardisation and de-subjectifying character of identical, numerous forms or systems. Another approach to emphasise their materiality was to use multiples. Because it was made up of produced pieces, this approach was also regarded as part of a larger trend toward the democratisation of art, or making art more accessible to a wider audience.
Childhood
Donald Judd was born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, on June 3, 1928. He spent most of his early life on his grandparents’ farm, and he and his parents continued to reside in the Midwest until they moved to New Jersey.
Early Life
After serving in the US Army in Korea, Judd attended the College of William & Mary, the Art Students League in New York, and Columbia University, where he received a B.S. in Philosophy in 1953. He then pursued a master’s degree in Art History, studying under eminent academics such as Rudolf Wittkower and Meyer Schapiro. He supported himself between 1959 and 1965 by writing commentary for prominent art publications such as Art News, and in 1968, he purchased a five-story cast-iron office building in Soho, which he used as his New York house and studio for the following 25 years.
Judd began his career as a painter in the late 1940s before switching to the medium of woodcut, which allowed him to go from figuration to abstraction because to its linear characteristics. Judd had fully abandoned the two-dimensional image plane by the early 1960s and began focusing on three-dimensional shapes in which the concept of materiality played a central role. In 1964, Judd published Specific Objects, a manifesto-like article proposing a rejection of illusionism’s residual, European value in favour of an art based on actual materials.
Judd collaborated with other New York-based artists such as John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, and Dan Flavin, who used unconventional materials such as found items, steel, aluminium, and neon lighting in their work. These artists, like Judd, had started to see the physical world as an integral part of their work, and that the most effective method to address spatial problems was through three-dimensional form.
Mid Life
Judd’s worldwide reputation was beginning to grow by 1963, and his second solo exhibition was presented at the Green Gallery in New York. The artist’s status in the New York art scene was cemented in 1966, when prominent dealer Leo Castelli arranged the first of a lengthy series of solo shows for him. Judd served as a lecturer at Brooklyn College from 1962 until 1964. In 1966, Judd was a visiting artist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire before moving on to Yale University to teach sculpture the following year.
Judd received many grants and awards from organisations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Swedish Institute during the 1960s and 1970s. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the first retrospective of his work in 1968, an event that cemented his status as a major figure in contemporary art.
Judd began working on increasingly massive and complicated sculptures in the early 1970s, such as large, hollow boxes made of steel or copper, typically coloured on the inside with an enamelled surface, and put directly on the floor. Judd broke with the customary way of presenting three-dimensional art, which was normally shown on a plinth, by placing his pieces in this way. Judd’s technique of erasing the physical and psychological gap between object and observer served to redefine this inter-relationship; rather than existing as a standalone work of art, Judd’s structures demand to be experienced as part of the viewer’s own phenomenological experience.
Late Life
Near 1971, Judd rented a home in Marfa, Texas, whose desert setting matched his style and would serve as an antithesis to his New York City studio. Judd bought a 340-acre piece of desert property outside of town in 1979 with the aid of the Dia Foundation, which contained abandoned structures from the former Army Fort D.A. Russell and on which he established the Chinati Foundation, which opened in 1986. His Minimalist approach connected with the scenery and wide-open areas. Judd was able to develop his visual language into bigger shapes, frequently employing aluminium or concrete and integrating the works into their surroundings.
Furthermore, the establishment of the Chinati Foundation allowed Judd to permanently place many large-scale works that met his aesthetic criteria, as well as to provide an exhibiting venue for other like-minded artists. He began designing furniture in 1984, and his materials grew to include anodized aluminium and acrylic.
On February 12, 1994, Judd died in New York from cancer.
Donald Judd was a leader of the Minimalist movement, and as such, he contributed to popularise the clean lines and uncluttered spaces that are so popular in interior design. Judd created the Chinati Foundation, which today functions as a museum, artist residency, and research facility. Judd began to look beyond Marfa in 1976, when he bought acreage in Presidio County, near the Mexican border, where he developed his views on rural architecture and land conservation, which have inspired practitioners in this field.
Famous Art by Donald Judd
Untitled
1968
A freestanding metal rectangle tinted with brown enamel, this piece reflects one of Judd’s early Minimalist attempts. By the 1960s, Judd had given up painting, believing that “actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a surface;” meaning that a work that shares three-dimensional space with the viewer draws more attention to itself than an image on the wall. Judd was beginning to see the relevance of the surroundings in how a work is regarded as an artist.
Untitled
1980
By the 1980s, Judd had shifted his focus to vertically hung stacks, whose concentration on the upright strongly indicates a repeat of the observer’s own body, a fact that helps to establish a strong and distinct link between two material presences. The combination of two distinct materials, aluminium and Plexiglas, provides the spectator with two contrasting experiences: from the front, the viewer is lured into the murky depths of space, while from the side, the work appears as opaque shapes thrusting into space. Judd himself stated that his works were “neither painting nor sculpture” and that he had therefore established a completely new aesthetic vocabulary.
Untitled
1984
The 15 concrete sculptures that run along the Chinati’s property’s border were the museum’s first installations, and were created during a four-year period from 1980 to 1984. Each unit is the same size — 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 metres — and hence is big enough to fit within. The idea that the environment is an important part of the work is pushed to a new level here, with each box acting as both a permeable space and a monolithic totality. The concrete’s neutral hue contrasts with the earth tones of the Texas plain, and the shapes’ industrial character appears to be inextricably linked to the abandoned air force base on which they are installed.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
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- Donald Judd was an American artist who rejected traditional painting and sculpture in favour of a notion of art based on the item as it exists in its surroundings.
- Judd’s work is part of the Minimalist movement, which aimed to liberate art from the Abstract Expressionists’ reliance on the painter’s self-referential trail in order to create artworks free of emotion.
- To achieve this, artists like Judd created works that consisted of single or repetitive geometric forms fashioned from industrialised, machine-made materials that were devoid of the artist’s touch.Judd’s geometric and modular works have been criticised for their apparent lack of content; however, it is this simplicity that calls into question the nature of art and positions Minimalist sculpture as a contemplative object, one whose literal and insistent presence informs the process of beholding.Judd’s objective was to create things that could stand alone as part of a larger field of image production and didn’t refer to anything other than their own physical presence.
- Be a result, his and other Minimalist artists’ work is sometimes referred to as literalist.Unlike classical sculpture, which is put on a pedestal to distinguish it as a piece of art, Judd’s works are placed directly on the floor, forcing the audience to confront them in their own, material reality.To give his works an impersonal, factory aesthetic, Judd combined the use of highly finished, industrialised materials like iron, steel, plastic, and Plexiglas – techniques and methods associated with the Bauhaus School – with the use of highly finished, industrialised materials like iron, steel, plastic, and Plexiglas – techniques and methods associated with the Bauhaus School.
- This distinguished his work from that of the Abstract Expressionists, whose emphasis on the artist’s hand gave their images a confessional, intimate tone.Judd frequently exhibited his work in a serialised format, a method that spoke to both the realities of postwar consumer society and the standardisation and de-subjectifying character of identical, numerous forms or systems.
- Another approach to emphasise their materiality was to use multiples.
- Because it was made up of produced pieces, this approach was also regarded as part of a larger trend toward the democratisation of art, or making art more accessible to a wider audience.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
