Donald Judd: A look at the essence of the sculpture

Donald Judd as a lasting constant in the art scene

Donald Judd is one of the most important contemporary artists in our world. For most art experts, it is one of the most remarkable artists that the American culture has produced in the course of its history. Together with Robert Morris and Sol Lewitt, Judd is considered the founder and main representative of minimalism , but refused to be reduced to a certain art style.

Judd particularly shaped the art of the American post -war period. Especially with generously dimensioned outdoor installations and extraordinary designs in the field of architecture and interior design . B. in his self-created "art village" Marfa in Texas.

Judd started his artist career with expressionist painting and, especially in its early days, has also created many smaller sculptures and installations as a sculptor, such as the large objects made of various materials such as concrete, plexiglass and steel. Like the large objects brought into precisely geometric forms that emphasize the material object units created by Judd.

In today's world, Judd remains present, with numerous sculptures in public space, near us. B. in Bottrop, Münster, Winterthur, Switzerland and the "Stage Set" in the Vienna City Park . In the United States, Judd's works are z. B. in Washington, New York and Marfa, Texas in public space.

In the “world's best list of art”, Donald Judd was still among the 50 most famous artists in the world in 2010/2011. In the decade before that, he probably was much higher in the meantime in the meantime, his exhibition history shows a true "Donald Judd boom" in the decade from 2000 to 2010. In recent years it has become a little quieter for Judd art, in 2016 it is "only" in 85th on the world's best list, but the trend graphic shows slightly upwards ...

He only started this whole artistic career of Judd as a painter and sculptor, architect and designer in his 3rd decade of life, from a secure professional position as a studied philosopher and recognized art critic .

Donald Judd's philosophical path to art

Donald Clarence Judd was born on June 3, 1928 in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Missouri is located in the Midwest of the USA, Excelsior Springs is a small town with around 10,000 inhabitants on the border with Kansas.

Excelsior Springs is almost 50 km northeast of KCMO (Kansas City, Missouri) and is just part of the Kansas City metropolitan region with currently around 2 million inhabitants and two Kansas Cities (in Missouri and Kansas).

When Donald Judd grew up, Excelsior Springs had almost 5,000 inhabitants, in all of Missouri (the state is almost half as large as Germany), fewer people lived in Berlin (which with its almost 900 km² does not even have half a percent of the Missouri area).

Judd was born on his grandparents' farm and spent his first years in a quiet and rural surroundings. Then moved to various other calm rural places in the United States, until the 18-year-old from 1946 to 1947 from school to military service (military service in the Korean War) "was allowed".

In 1948 Judd began studying philosophy at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, but already moved to Columbia University New York in New York in 1949. Here he continued to study philosophy and also took college of art courses at the "School of General Studies". In 1953 he passed the Bachelor of Science in philosophy ("Cum Laude").

The courses on the "Liberal Art College" of the Columbia had intensified Judd's interest in art, after graduating in philosophy he worked under Rudolf Wittkower and Meyer Schapiro (famous art historian who had to leave their home countries because of anti -Semitism) on a master's degree in art history .

In addition, he also attended the evening courses of the legendary "Art Students League" New York , the most influential and best known of these connections from art students for free learning and working.

In the graduate list of Art Students League of New York, it is teeming with artists (among the teachers and the students), who are now seen as pioneers of modern art: Lucian Bernhard and Thomas Eakins, George Grosz and Franz Kline, Reginald Marsh and John French Sloan taught; Louise Bourgeois , Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein , Georgia O'keeffe, Jackson Pollock , Robert Rauschenberg , Man Ray , Mark Rothko and Cy Twombly learned here, and these were only extracts.

From 1959 Judd no longer had to finance all of these studies with any work with any non -artificial issues, but worked as a freelance critic for three prestigious artificial writings: Art News, Arts Magazine and Art International (until 1965).

From 1962 he also accepted various teaching posts : at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences New York, at Yale University New Haven, at Oberlin College in Ohio and at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. In 1965 he undertook an extensive artistic educational trip to Sweden.

Donald Judd's art: Maximum skill needs minimal frills

From around the mid -1950s, Judd had dealt with wood as work material, in a progressive movement from the figurative to ever more abstract images, from organically round forms to careful craftsmanship in continuous lines and angles. Until around 1961 the material was wood as work material; In addition to the figurative processing, he also experimented with the pressure from the wooden block.

Here you can visit a number of his "Woodcuts" : www.juddfoundation.org/exhibitions/donald-judd-woodcuts (to enlarge each by clicking).

After this phase, his art style moved even continuously from the illusion of the illustration in painting to the material-bound sculpture. He was increasingly enthusiastic about constructions in which the essentials of the material became the core of the work. These minimalist sculptures accepted ever larger dimensions and from 1973, especially for the line -up outdoors.

A typical Judd sculpture has been of Lake Aasen, an artificially created reservoir in Münster, Westphalia (Aasewiese below the Mühlenhof): www.wn.de/ .

Of the early wooden sculptures that could be admired at Judd's first exhibitions, Judd later made whole rows of "design sculptures" in metal sometimes also colored plexiglas: artintelligence.net/

On the former army area in Marfa, Judd set up his main work in two halls: 100 huge boxes made of polished aluminum, an enchantingly beautiful "box" next to the other: "100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum" , 1982-1986, chinati.org/ .

Donald Judd's quiet artist career

Judd had already started in the late 1940s with the practical art exercise (expressionist painting), the first solo exhibition of his expressionist pictures took place in 1957 in the New York Panoras Gallery.

He did not want to show the first of his sculptural work limited to minimal statements for a long time, and for the first time in 1963 he chose some of his opinion to exhibit them in the Green Gallery New York. "Untitled" , 1963, Oil on Wood with Plexiglas, C2.Staticflickr.com/ , is one of these artificial works.

A complete success and the beginning of a rain exhibition activity, with which Donald Judd, who was already known and recognized as an art critic for European and Young American art, soon became a reputation as an artist.

To date, Donald Judd's works have been seen in almost 1,000 exhibitions , whereby his exhibition history offers interesting room for interpretation: around 140 solo exhibitions are compared to around 850 group exhibitions. What could be a proof at first glance that Donald Judd is one of the team workers born, prefers to develop art together with other artists and then also present it.

"Only" 140 solo exhibitions also suggest that Donald Judd was not one of the artists who demand public attention to the same degree for their person as for their art. The long hesitation before the first exhibition of his newly designed art seems more to indicate that Judd did not even demand public attention for his art, but rather simply "did his art in peace".

Both are certainly not entirely wrong, Judd took the opportunity to buy a house in New York in 1968 in 1968. Not just any house, but a five-story historic building with a beautiful cast iron facade from 1870, in the middle of Manhattan and a few meters from Broadway. For which he did not even pay $ 70,000 at the time (61,000 euros and a few crushed, but there would be no matchbox on Broadway today).

Judd used the building as his New York residential building and studio and renovated it all his life, floor by floor, it looks today: Designdiversions.com/ .

Over the years, the New York House often served as an exhibition room for works that Judd had bought from other artists or commissioned other artists; This alone shows that Donald Judd did not think of the world's artistic navel, but worked with a view to other artists.

Today the building houses the Judd Foundation, designed by him in 1977 and founded in 1996 by his children to maintain his work and make it open to the public.

The fact that Judd also liked to work with other artists shows the development of his second main place of residence and whereabouts: the once sleepy village Marfa, a water station on the San Antonio Railway in the southwest of Texas, which Judd visited for the first time in 1973. At that time, Judd initially rented part of the "block", which actually comprises an entire (house) block, a former military fortons of 140 hectares with more than 30 barracks of earlier ammunition deposits and aircraft hangar.

Judd used his part to live and as a studio and bought the whole "block" in 1974. It was expanded over time into a building site surrounded by historical clay walls, including cactus gardens, Mobiliar designed by Judd, a swimming pool and private garden, two solid studio halls and a private library with more than 10,000 volumes.

Subsequently, more buildings were added, an architecture studio in a former bank, an architecture office in a two-story town house, other historic buildings in sometimes considerable sizes, e.g. B. a former hotel and a former wholesale market. Judd planned a foundation to build an art and artist museum in Marfa- architecture and art in the middle of the desert, in a unique landscape, surrounded by the Chinati mountains.

Judd got help with the "Dia Art Foundation" . Dia comes from the Greek "through" and stands for the purpose of the foundation - promotion of artistic projects that could not be realized without support. The "Dia Art Foundation" has z. B. promoted Joseph Beuys's 7000 oak project and helped Donald Judd in 1987 to found his "Chinati Foundation".

As part of the funding, the founders collected works by the funded artists, since 2003 the foundation has had its own museum in Beacon DIA: Beacon

Its inventory proves that funding is worthwhile: Today works by Bernd and Hilla Becher , Joseph Beuys , Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Dan Flavin, Katharina Fritsch, Ann Hamilton, Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, on Kawara, IMi Knoebel, Sol Lewitt , Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman , Blinky Palermo , Gerhard Richter , Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra , Robert Smithson, Diana Thater, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol , Lawrence Weiner, Robert Whitman and La Monte Young ...

Donald Judd now had his museum complex, in which he was able to present his work and the work of friendly artists as an exemplary and the work with friends.

And Marfa is no longer a sleepy nest, but became a living and well -known artist city "Chinati Foundation" Since 1987 z. B. Large -scale installations by John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin , Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg , David Rabinowitch and John Wesley in Marfa; The artists-in-residence program offers artists from all over the world the opportunity to further develop and present their work in a spacious, dimensioned and stimulating environment.

Donald Judd attracted a lot of artists to Marfa, and that was not all, he brought a dead place to life.

When Donald Judd had created the second of art and architecture that was so important for him as the optimal presentation environment of this art at the end of the 1980s, he took the next project, this time in Europe: In Küssnacht am Rigi in the Swiss canton of Schwyz, he acquired a former inn in 1943 and let him convert it according to his own designs.

The House of Judd Eichholteren was redesigned in 1992/1993 by Swiss architects into a generous object with largely open floor areas, which preserved the inherent qualities of the building, yet neutral rooms, which were equally suitable for living, working and exhibiting art: www.jollesarch.ch/ .

Before Judd was able to form the Swiss artificial space into a total work of art, he suffered seriously and died on February 12, 1994 in New York at the age of 65.

Marfa continued, other artists came to live and work permanently in Marfa, new galleries have opened, the Lannan Foundation has launched a Writers-in-Residence program , there is a Marfa Theater Group, the Crowley Fountation Theater provides nonprofit organizations with 175 seats for events free of charge.

International Woman's Foundation opened its “Building 98” , which has since offered an artist-in-residence program and George Sugarman sculpture garden .

Elmgreen and drag set "Prada Marfa" placed a whole piece in front of Marfa, a little remote the cult shop, but with real Prada handbags and shoes in the display: www.graymalin.com/ . The artist couple Elmgreen and Dragset remained in Marfa and installed the multifunctional art space "Ballroom Marfa" , in which art films are shown, musical performances are performed and exhibitions and art installations are presented.

Sonic Youth gave a free rock concert in the village, Rad-Profi Lance Armstrong rented a loft (when he was still a respected bike professional), the Coen brothers made a few scenes from the cult film "No Country for Old Men" in Marfa (James Dean's last film "Giants" was completely made in Marfa).

Today Marfa has an airport and a radio station, a weekly newspaper, the "Marfa Magazine", a public library and the "Marfa Film Festival", a Montessori kindergarten, gourmet restaurants and delicatessen. Elementary school students are taught in the Marfa Elementary School, in which Marfa Junior/Senior High School the older students, the private Marfa International School grants scholarships as required.

In Marfa, six times as many visitors are traveling every year as the place has inhabitants, for art -obsessed people, the long journey is a kind of pilgrimage, the American writer Lewis Hyde Kürte Chinati for the "Tajsch Mahal America".

Donald Judd is very present today's art world

Donald Judd is more exhibited today than at the beginning of his career as an artist. The solo exhibition "Donald Judd - Mueblles Y Grabados" in the Galería Elvira González in Madrid, group exhibitions with works Donald Judd run through the world in seven locations in the Galería Elvira González in Galería Elvira González:

• "The Natural Order of Things" in the Museo Jumex in Mexico City (until May 08, 2016)
• "The Saturday Collection: Meio Século de Arte Europeia e Americana. Part 1" im Museu Serralves Museu de Arte Contemporânea Porto (until May 8, 2016)
• "Dansaekhwa and Minimimism" at Blum & PoE New York City (until May 21, 2016)
• "Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol Lewitt Collection" in the Drawing Center New York City (until June 2016)
• "Objects and Bodies at Rest and in Motion" in the Moderna Museet Stockholm (until June 2016)
• "Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenneth Noland: A Dialogue" in the Leo Castelli Gallery New York City (by the end of June 2016)
• "Sculpture on the Move 1946-2016" in the Museum of Contemporary Art Basel (until September 2016)

About as many exhibitions as Donald Judd stated in his artist activity throughout the first decade; More will follow, in 2016 and afterwards.

On the website of the Judd Foundation www.juddfoundation.org you can book a visit to Marfa or just look around, in Marfa and in building 101 Spring Street. And you can see a number of online exhibitions:

• Dan Flavin, works in the context of his friendship with Donald Judd
• Donald Judd and Trisha Brown, including the joint work "Son of Gone Fishin" (1981) and "Newark (Niweweorce)" (1987)
• Casa Perez in Marfa: Open House
• 101 Spring Street, Documents of History and Context
• David Novros: "Untitled" (1970), a Fresco in 101 Spring Street
• Donald Judd: Woodcuts, 70 works from 1960 to 1993
• From Arroyo Grande to Ayala de Chinati: Land Conservation and Desert Structures
• The Public Life, Documents from the Donald Judd Archives about Judd's wide -ranging political, social and environmentally critical commitment
• From the Vault: Donald Judd's life and work in selected, partly unpublished documents from the "family crypt" of the Donald Judd Archive

on the website of the Chinati Foundation Chinati.org , by Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain and Carl Andre, Ingolfur Arnarrson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch.

You will also learn everything about visiting the Chinati Foundation, the programs for the public (readings, performances, exhibitions and special events), the Robert Irwin Project and the next "Chinati Weekend" in October 2016.

With new and special exhibitions, rounds of discussion, performances, the annual charity dinner and a very special view of Judd's "100 Works in Mill Aluminum" in the sunset. Most of the offer can be visited free of charge. You can continue to become a member of the foundation or acquire Limited Editions, Prints and Books in Store, and media are available for media.

The English Tate Gallery also shows all of its Judd works on their website, on request as a comfortable slideshow: www.tete.org.uk/

A few Donald-Judd legends

Donald Judd retired to Marfa. Judd loathed the New York Engine, the noise and the climate (which was much more uncomfortable in his time in its time in every environmental standards than today).

He was also far ahead of his time in his assessment of the modern art business: While the efforts to stylize a myth of the withdrawn, closed world for art connoisseurs and artists just really started, Judd already realized that he despised the art world.

"only show business and lazy spells" , and he announced that without any consideration in public: "I believe that today the largest part of today's art rejects it to recognize any kind of absolute or general morality." But also: "I assume that a kind of morality can be seen in the endeavor to do his job well."

His withdrawal to Marfa was not only an escape from New York, but had a further sense: Judd wanted to create a place in which "part of contemporary art exists as an example of how this art was meant in its context." As the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape, a strict scale of art of this time must be set in this part of the world somewhere.

The fact that Judd felt called to set this yardstick testifies to healthy trust in the value of his work - which should be confirmed by the leading art scientists in the world.

Judd asked for a look outside the box, but also from the people with whom he worked. The anecdote has been handed down that he secured doors with padlocks and, with an employee questioning after the number combination, referred to the date of the Battle of Waterloo, which should and could find out himself.

The incredulous outrage with which a journalist of a leading German news magazine tells this episode in 2010 reveals attentive readers that this journalist has not yet reached the information age two decades after this incident ...

Donald Judd's work is full of suggestions for the future

Donald Judd's life's work provides the following artists a pleasant template: It is ok to concentrate on his art, just make his thing and develop his own art style without throwing his own person on the market.

Without inevitably making a much attention from every work of art without keeping his face in every newspaper and in every television station without constantly being at the centers of the event. You can simply do your job, and if you are interested in this work, you will find it, and if it is in the middle of the desert.

Donald Judd delivers wonderful templates to all creative people, first of all with the idea of ​​discovering the materials that our world offers us and thoroughly dealing with a material before you go to your workmanship. Then very specific, with many wonderful inspiration.

The perfectionist usually didn't say very much in function and/or design, so he designed furniture himself. Beds and tables, shelves and chairs, simple and yet completely functional like Shaker furniture.

• A shelf can be constructed as simple and yet full of aesthetics: artofthemoooc.org/
• Or so simple and yet very extraordinary: www.artnet.com/
• So a seating group can look straightforward that "more can": reverent.org/
• Or so straightforward, with potential for a lot of comfort: www.port-magazine.com
• Just a desk that offers more space: www.die-neue-skamme.de/
• A room can be so flooded with light: static1.squarespace.com/
• Privacy in bed is hardly more relaxed: The189.com/

In a portrait of Donald Judds it can be read that he had had bad experiences with the presentation of his works because visitors did not approach his art with the necessary respect or distance. So B. in the Stuttgart State Gallery for years a Judd sculpture (a cuboid) hung near the entrance that was confused by the visitors with the cloakroom; They put hats and jackets on them.

The portrayer came to this assessment for almost two decades after Donald Judd's death. Against the background of Judd's numerous designs of "usable art" and his statement: "Whatever the environment looks, it influences the work of art in one way or another; it can be unapproachable or not. It is inaccessibility in my art, but it always has to have a certain degree of everyday life. It can be doubted that this relaxed handling of the artwork presented was a bad experience for the artist.

Dealing with Donald Judd's work can also bring confirmation and relief to many people. Judd has dealt with philosophy and art history in the world and has developed a restriction to the essentials from the knowledge acquired. A look at things and the world that is very big. For all people who no longer feel like setting up their living environment according to the sales specifications of companies.

For all people who no longer feel like doing their rooms with imported furniture folds that fly apart after the first move. For all people who generally no longer feel like flooding with short -lived consumer goods that were produced under inhumane circumstances.

Minimalism , with an idea of ​​reflection on the core of things, on meaningful life and action, provides many answers to the questions that life in an increasingly complicated world poses. Donald Judd took this path of concentration and self -reflection very early, at a time that today's contemporaries only appeared less chaotic than the present, in truth the world was always right, unjust and incomprehensible, and it was always almost the same extent.

In truth, we even have a big advantage today: In contrast to the people of Donald Judd's generation, each of us can inform themselves with a few clicks about the life of people like Donald Judd and draw their own conclusions from the experienced ...

If enough of the Berliners, Cologne, Frankfurters, Dortmunders, Essener and Leipzigern would find out about Donald Judd's life with longing for country life, Gosen-Neu Zittau and Schollene, Beggerow and Kusel, Herne, Burgkirchen an der Alz, Sorge and Freudenburg have long been a new and long-lasting reason to be happy ... Real estate prices continuously, in contrast to the rest of the USA.

Thankfully, Donald Judd has given the normally earning person enough of his art, who can be viewed (almost) free of charge, since the prices of his art are now in the double -digit million range ...

You can find art from Judd in Germany in the Hamburg Bahnhof Museum for the Presentation of Berlin, in the art collections of the Ruhr University Bochum, in the Josef Albers Museum Bottrop, in the Weserburg Museum for Modern Art Bremen, in the Kolumba Cologne, in the Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, in the K20 Düsseldorf, in the Museum Folkwang Essen, in the Museum for Modern Art Frankfurt/Main, in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in the Center for Art and Media Technology Karlsruhe, in the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, in the municipal museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, in the Sindelfingen show, the Kunsthalle Weishaupt Ulm, the new Museum Weimar and the Museum Wiesbaden.

Lina cream

Passionate author with lively art interest

www.kunstplaza.de