As with Robert Morris, Donald Judd wrote extensively about the nature of sculpture. Judd, too, thought that the word “sculpture” was unsatisfactory in describing his creative pursuits, as he felt it referred to an object that was illustrative or narrative in nature. Instead, he preferred to use the term “specific object.” Also like Morris, Judd felt that personal gesture was not essential to the creative process; rather, the selection of materials, colors and composition sufficiently expressed his artistic endeavors. His Plexiglas-and-metal stacks from 1969 and his boxes from 1966 illustrate the deliberate, opposing forces he incorporated into his work. In both works, lightness meets durability, openness meets inaccessibility. Both sculptures also display Judd’s keen interest in the integration of space between the elements, as well as around the works. The stacks expand or contract depending on the height of the ceiling (here there are only eight of ten), but the spaces between them remain consistent: the elements are the same distance apart as they are tall. And when Judd later introduced non-uniform heights and widths into his material, the spaces between them reflected that change.
Details
- Artist Name: Donald Judd (American, 1928-1994)
- Title: Untitled
- Date: 1969
- Medium: Stainless steel with blue Plexiglas front and sides, ten units
- Dimensions: 172-1/4 x 40-1/4 x 31-1/4 in. (437.5 x 102.2 x 79.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Partial Museum Purchase, Partial Gift of the Artist
- Accession Number: P.1969.079a-j
- Copyright: Art © Judd Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Reproduction of this image, including downloading, is prohibited without written authorization from VAGA www.vagarights.com
Object Information
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
Donald Judd
- National Gallery of Canada, 1975-05-23 to 1975-07-06
[on temporary loan]
- National Gallery of Canada, 1975-07 to 1976-10
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1994-04-03 to 1998-10-07
Beyond Geometry - Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2004-06-13 to 2004-10-03
- Miami Art Museum, 2004-11-18 to 2005-04-23
Loan to the permanent collection, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries at the Huntington_6
- The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2019-02-26 to 2023-08-01
Inaugural Exhibition / Extended Loan
- Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 1999-01-18 to 2004-05-30
American Art of the 1950s and 1960s from the Collection of the Norton Simon Museum
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988-08-11 to 1994-04-03
Beyond Brancusi: The Space of Sculpture
- Norton Simon Museum, 2013-04-26 to 2014-01-06
Recent Acquisitions, 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
- Smith, Brydon, Donald Judd, no. 208 p. 209
- Agee, William C., Art in America, p. 44-45
- Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, 1969, no. 30 p. 23
- Wight, Frederick S., 20th Century Sculpture from Southern California Collections, 1972, p. 75
- Biagell, Matthew, A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture, 1984, no. 380 p. 379
- Colpitt, Frances, Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective, 1990, pl. 25
- Zelevansky, Lynn, Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s, 2004, pp. 144-145, 219
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