Artist Presentation 10: Donald Judd

"Untitled"

Donald Judd is one of the most well known Minimalist artists. He is famous for his sleek, metal, box-like structures which were made of industrial materials such as: plywood, sheet metal, and plexiglass. His work is very depersonalized and focuses more on exploration of space, scale, and materials. The art he creates does not serve as a metaphor for the human experience. Judd is emphatically concerned with pure forms. His works become lucid statements about proportion and rhythm as well as assertions about the displacement of space. His sculptures share rather than invade the observer's space, but they create a sense of monumentality which often lends them a dynamic presence.

Donald Judd says, "Abstract art has its own integrity, not someone else's 'integration' with something else. Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all." When I see Judd's work I automatically think of Tony Smith's piece, "Die," which is considered by many to be the end of modern art. I never really knew a lot about Minimalist art, but now I have become very intrigued by it because I like the fact that it is not trying to portray the feelings of human beings. Instead, this type of art is more focused on the essence of an environment and how one can interact with an object in its space.