Donald Judd

Donald Clarence Judd is a Artiste plastics technician and American theorist , born with Excelsior Springs (Missouri) the June 3rd 1928 and died with New York the February 12th 1994. With Robert Morris, it is one of the principal representatives of the Minimalisme. Within the framework of the research directed towards a reduction of the forms to essence, it evolves/moves in the orbit of the minimal sculpture, bringing back its works to the geometric standards simplest. It is done, in addition, the lawyer of the concept of permanent installation which it into practice puts in a building that it has with New York like in his ranch with the Texas.

Biography

After having been useful in the army in Korea as mechanic in 1946 - 1947, Donald Judd off undertakes in 1948 studies of philosophy to the College William and Mary with Williamsburg (Virginia) and continues them with the Université Columbia of New York. In 1953, it obtains its diploma of philosophy after studies which relate primarily to the Empirisme and the Pragmatisme and is directed then towards a control of Histoire of art under the direction of Rudolf Wittkower and Meyer Schapiro, which makes it take part in its seminar on Jackson Pollock. In parallel, it follows the courses of the evening of the Art Students League and earns its living while contributing like art critic, between 1959 and 1965, with important American magazines of art such as ARTnews , Arts Magazine and International Art , adopting from the start a direct speech, convincing, sometimes polemic.

Judd starts to paint fabrics influenced by the great American tradition of the abstract Expressionnisme and obtains its first personal exposure to the Panoras Gallery in New York in 1957. But the table paints obstructs it because it cannot miss containing a certain amount of illusionnism, and it is directed towards constructions where the materiality is in the middle of the artistic vocabulary, using modest materials like metal, plywood, cement and plexiglass of color, which were going to become its trademark during all its career, and of the simple forms, often repeated, to explore the space and the use of space. In 1968, the Whitney Museum off American Art presents a retrospective of its work without including any paintings of its beginnings.

The same year, Judd acquires of a building of five floors in New York, which enables him to install its work in a way more permanent than in galleries or museums. Gradually, it will wish permanent installations for its work and for that of the others, estimating that the temporary exhibitions, conceived by conservatives for visitors, place art itself at the background and, ultimately, degrade it by incompetence or incomprégension. This was to become for him a central concern, its interest for the permanent installations parallel to growing its dislike for the world of Article.

Throughout the Years 1970 and 1980, it produces radical works which call into question the ideals of the traditional Western sculpture. Judd considers that art should not represent anything, but simply to be. In the years 1970, it starts to carry out installations with the size of a part, which interact with space surrounding and propose to the spectator an almost physical experiment. Its esthetics follows its strict own rules to secure illustion and falseness, and its works are clear, strong and defined. It also approaches the Design and the Architecture.

With the beginning of the year 1970, Judd starts to go each year with its family in Low-California (Mexico) where it is struck by the desert; it conservar during all its life a very strong bond with this ground. In 1971, it rents a house with Marfa (Texas), where it comes ressourcer and to forget the vibrating life of the world of New Yorkean art. It is the starting point of the acquisition of several buildings and a ranch of 243 km ², which it does almost all to restore carefully. It settles definitively in Marfa starting from 1972. These properties, just like its building in New York, are maintained today by the Fondation Judd (Judd Foundation).

In 1979, with the assistance of the Dia Art Foundation of New York, it acquired of a piece of desert of 1.4 km ² close to Marfa, including/understanding vestiges of an abandoned complex of the American army, Strong D.A. Russell. The site was transformed into center of contemporary art dedicated to Judd and its contemporaries and entrusted to the Fondation Chinati (Chinati Foundation). It presents works of big size of Judd, John Chamberlain, daN Flavin, David Rabinowitch, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Long Richard, Carl André, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen. Works of Judd which are presented there include/understand 15 installations of outside out of concrete and 100 parts in aluminimum presented in two barraquements renovated carefully.

In 2006, the Judd Foundation decided to put at the biddings approximately 35 sculptures of Judd at Christie' S in New York. The posted goal of the sale is of consituer an equipment to finance the permanent exposure of works of Judd to Texas and New York. The 25 million collected dollars will make it possible the foundation to fulfill its mission; in its will, Judd had indicated that “the works of art which I have at the date of my death and who are installed to the 101 Spring Street in New York or in Marfa (Texas) will be preserved in situ . ”

Judd died of a Lymphome with Manhattan in 1994.

In 1976, Donald Judd was professor invited to the Oberlin College in Ohio. Starting from 1983, it gave conferences on art and his relationship with architecture in various universities to the the United States, in Europe and Asia.

In 1964, Donald Judd had married the dancer Julie Finch, of which it was to divorce later on, and of which it had two children: a son Flavin Starbuck Judd (born in 1968) and a girl To groove Yingling Judd (born in 1970).

Work

When he realizes that he will be able to never make tables which would represent only one meaning surface, without depth, unless passing some by monochromic painting, Donald Judd chooses to be interested in the development of works which would be neither of the painting nor of the sculpture: geometrical volumes in three dimensions, with the industrial colors, “specific objects” (title of its test founder of 1965), entities tautologiquement reduced to the matter and the pure volume, which propose neither time nor space beyond themselves, and in which it is not any more question of modelling, size or pruning which have too many anthropomorphic effects.

In its text Specific Objects (Of some specific objects) , Donald Judd written: “Three dimensions are real space. That eliminates the problem from the illusionism and the literal space, the space which surrounds or is contained in the signs and the colors - what wants to say that one is removed from the one of the most outstanding vestiges, and most criticizable, bequeathed by European art”. In a discussion with Lucy Lippard, it also indicates: “The essential quality of the geometrical forms comes from what they are not organic, unlike any other form known as artistic”.

Often, work consists of volumes which are arranged according to mathematical progressions with the perfectly impartial code enabling him to escape the expressive one. The Continuation of Fibonacci that the artist invites us to follow to the level of empty spaces like full spaces, leads us to sweep the work of the glance: from left to right and from right to left, in a completely directed reading which forces not to stick to a center or a particular zone of the unit. Work is a whole: “… all I' m interested in is having has work interesting to me ace has whole. I don' T think there' S any way you edge juggle has composition that would make it more interesting in terms off the shares. ”

In front of another series of works: its Stacks composed of parallelepipeds hung regularly in height on a wall, space between each module is equal to its own thickness and their number (from 6 to 10) depends on the height of the wall, which integrates work into each new exposure, in reality on its place.

In critical position compared to the object/table fixed on an ogee moulding, work is placed projecting on the wall and in its development, is played of the painting categories/sculpture, plans/volumes, empties/full, verticality/horizontality. The fact that the “pile” has the air of a column without base gives him also a particular status in the history of sculptural art. The glance that one carries to him carries out in an outward journey and return of the ground to the ceiling and leads us to note the perverse effects - but real here - prospect since all the parallelepipedic elements, although they are perfectly identical, are actually perceived as if they had different forms.

Donald Judd is very attentive with the presentation of his works because he regards them as fragments of the unit in which they are laid out. For that, it buys in 1973, of the buildings (with Marfa in Texas) which allow him an experimentation in situ of its works.

Of artist, Donald Judd becomes thus the architect, the designer, the organizer of an environment with which he confronts his works in order to check the relevance of it.

References

External bonds

Note on Donald Judd
Donald Judd on the site www.artcyclopedia.com
Card artist of the MAMCO, Geneva
Official site of the Foundation Judd
The Chinati Foundation/La Foundation Chinati
Biographical note on Handbook off Texas Online
Official site of the Town of Marfa (Texas)
Dia Beacon
Article of NewYork Times, 2006
Retrospective of the Tate Modern, London, 2004
Article on Atforum, February 2000
List of the exposures

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