Donald Judd

Rating:
Summary: The One to Have
Review: If you only buy one Donald Judd book in your lifetime, this may be the one to have. Beautifully designed and produced, with gorgeous full-bleed color reproductions, it is comprehensive in covering all the major aspects of his production (prints possibly excepted), including early paintings, the transition to sculpture, the late work, and the work on major art environments, i.e. Marfa and Spring Street. Most effectively, it groups major aspects of Judd's work into categories (stacks, linear wall pieces, series of boxes, etc.) clearly laying out his initial concepts, their evolution over time, and their relationships to other categories of work. In my brief time with this book, I have already come away with a much greater understanding of Judd's oeuvre and ways of thinking, thanks largely to the wonderfully didactic quality of the entire enterprise. I am assuming Nicolas Serota, the director of the Tate Modern and the book's editor, is largely responsible for this. Of the several intriguing essays, I have only thoroughly read the one by David Batchelor, a British Judd-ologist who addresses the issue of color. It alone is worth the price of the book, tracing aspects of the work back to initially wan late-nineteenth century attempts at the artistic representation of machinery, and then bringing us forward to Judd's thorough (albeit fascinatingly undocumented) familiarity with the technology and varieties of contemporary car paints (apparently his selection of [always impure] colors referenced specific automobiles, i.e. 1958 Ford Galaxy Celeste Green). The essay is full of wonderful observations such as Batchelor's equation of traditional brushes with organic nature, actual embodiments of their classical subject matter, that had to ultimately be abandoned by Judd (and of course others) in his search for artistic tools reflective of mechanization and urban modernity. Furthermore, Batchelor illustrates how the tools may have changed but Judd's concern with color, texture, and composition remained rooted in art-historical and even painterly considerations. Judd vehemently rejected the minimalist label, such label in Batchelor's view having contributed to critics' failure to recognize the sophisticated color and sensuality of the works. And finally, we are led to consider how the works may be as much about problems of painting and even (gasp) allusion and representation as about problems of sculpture. Great stuff.