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In 1969 Studio International allowed Donald Judd to air
his grievances towards the art world in an aptly titled article,
Complaints. In this, Judd railed against the failings of
art, artists, architects, art critics and institutions. No one,
it appears, escaped his vitriol and the editor allowed him in his
grumpy tirade to describe one critic's work as 'shit'. He claimed
only to agree to write Complaints to stop Studio International
from calling him a minimalist.
Very few artists receive attention without publicity as
a new group. It's another case of the simplicity of criticism
and of the public. It seems as if the magazines are unwilling
to give a new artist space by himself.2
In Art and America in 1984, Judd continued his excoriation
of the failings of contemporary art in A long discussion not
about master-pieces but about why there are so few of them.
Judd claimed that art of the 1970s had been integrated into 'industrial
and bureaucratic society'. Judd favoured local independence: 'The
opposition can't be an institution but must be lots of diverse and
educated people arguing and objecting'.3 Judd had a dark, ironic
view of the art world and the world at large. The art world, in
his view, simply paralleled the mindless conversion of American
towns into 'strip' cities. Richard Shiff observed Judd's reactions:
Things were happening and the changes were visible, but
few who noticed were thoughtful about it, and no one was
supervising. If the cultural environment was bleak and the
situation of the artist out-of-control, good work nevertheless
continued during the 1970s and 1980s, even if to little
effect in the face of the postmodernism vogue and an attitude
on the part of the critics, 'that art should be democratic'.
It was a position that might be nobly motivated, however
misguided; but all too often, like other politicised aesthetic
stances, it was merely opportunistic.4
The notion of quality in art became increasingly unpopular and
deemed politically incorrect. Judd, however, objected claiming that,
'Politics alone should be democratic … art is intrinsically
a matter of quality'. Like that very different commentator, Peter
Fuller in Britain in the 1980s, Judd was not remotely hesitant in
his demolition of mediocrity in art. 'There's serious high art and
then there's everybody else, all equally low.'5
Flavin plays Reinhardt, entertaining but not worth an article
on his work; Bell and Irwin hardly exist; Greenbergers such
as Krauss review all the shows … that's balanced mediocrity.6
Of Jack Wesley Burnham's book, Beyond Modern Sculpture,
he writes:
Never mind the present. It's a pastiche of art survey information
and misinformation. His idea of history, such as it is,
is deterministic. Everyone has his hindsighted place and
history rolls on.7
Judd further criticised Burnham's study as 'baloney' and 'silly
futurism', and his work as suffering from 'sloppy correlation[s],
careless and general history and the mystical projection of the
future'. Judd did, however, admire Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Claes
Oldenburg, David Rabinowitch and Richard Serra.
Donald Judd was born in 1928. As his Studio International
article of 1969 states, he was vehemently opposed to being labelled
a minimalist. Yet in Minimalism, Art of Circumstance, Kenneth
Baker clarifies certain misconceptions:
Think of 'Minimalism' as the name not of an artistic style
but of a historical moment, a brief outbreak of critical
thought and invention in the cavalcade of post-war American
art … Many of the American artists known as minimalists
have in common little more than the fact that their works
met with some recognition and success in the New York art
market as it began to set the pace of international traffic
in contemporary.8
Minimalism is used in a general sense to denote works of art or
forms of design that are characterised by a stylistic austerity.
It is more precise when applied to the visual arts, especially sculpture.
The works produced from the 1960s onwards by Carl Andre and Donald
Judd, for example, are generally referred to as minimalist. Expressive
technique was absent, factory-made replaced handmade. The work found
its roots in Suprematism, De Stijl and Russian Constructivism, in
the work of Kasimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Piet Mondrian
and Josef Albers. Mondrian and Albers both lived in America in the
latter part of their lives. American industry and the burgeoning
mass production of objects of all kinds lent itself to the method
and vision of both Judd and Tony Smith.
[They] responded to the cynical superabundance of industry
by using its services to produce objects calculatedly unlike
what the cornucopia of mass production disgorges. These
artists recognized that industry controlled the aesthetic
physics of objects to a degree that no individual artist
could, and they resorted to industrial fabrication in order
to avail themselves of that control.9
Minimalist art can be characterised by qualities that differentiated
it from traditional aesthetics; it is indistinguishable from basic
materials or found objects. In this Marcel Duchamp was their historic
precedent. In their renunciation of plinths and materials such as
stone or bronze, their true precedent was Constantin Brancusi. With
hindsight, the fury and the rhetoric of Donald Judd's writings can
be explained as a product of the extraordinary tension and pluralism
in the art world and in culture in general in the 1960s - a tension
that was, in fact, exploited by certain editors and commentators
who derived pleasure from setting factions and individuals against
each other. Baker observes:
Whether the concept or specifications of a work of art
have priority over its material reality - and who decides
this and how - were live issues throughout the Minimalist
years. The works of some artists - despite what they may
have said to the contrary - affirmed intellect as the determinative
dimension of people and of art; others gave primacy to the
observers' bodily awareness as the standpoint from which
he must construe an artwork's rationale and his own role
in determining what he sees. A widely held assumption in
the New York art world of the 1960s was that in terms of
the way his work resists easy reading, an artist might propose
without words a theory of how and where meaning occurs and
what it is to see understandably. Among the so-called Minimalists
were artists who tried to do just that.10
Minimalist art in America came about as a reaction to the romantic
exuberance of Abstract Expressionist painting. Numerous other references
from American culture can be found expressing simplicity in architecture
and design. Society in the 1960s was characterised by the polarity
of individual expressionism versus the inescapable demands of society.
Minimalism was a counter to a form of television-inspired narcissism;
it was a high-minded form of individualism - a reaction to the conformity
and personal sacrifice required during and after the Second World
War. Minimalism was deeply sober at a time when a great conflict
existed over questions of personal liberty, highlighted by the Vietnam
War. Issues of civil rights and government doctrine brought issues
such as racism, feminism and the legitimacy of institutions into
question.
The questions raised by Minimal sculpture seem a lot less
abstruse when you remember how pervasive (though how inconsequential
from the vantage point of power) was the issue of the individual's
capacity to judge the meaning of events in his own life
and in the larger world. In Minimalism and Pop Art, though
with very different emphases, the nature of human selfhood
and the weight (or weightlessness) of direct experience
were interconnected themes.11
The elimination of artwork-as-commodity was seen as the only valid
way in which a culture dominated by commercialism could be reversed.
In the 1970s the critical spirit became neutralised by the art business,
coincidentally as a number of Minimal artists were becoming extremely
successful in financial terms.
Donald Judd was born and raised in the Midwest. He joined the army
after high school, knowing that he would in due course qualify for
an educational grant. In 1953 he graduated from Columbia in Philosophy;
he had also studied at the Art Students' league in Manhattan. He
completed a Masters degree in 1962. In 1959 Judd began publishing
art criticism in Arts magazine (then edited by Hilton Kramer)
and became a regular contributor. By the late 1950s Judd was quite
disillusioned with painting and began to experiment. He produced
in 1961 a work that with hindsight was an important point in his
development. 'Relief' 1961 was made with asphaltum and gesso on
composition board, mounted on wood with an aluminium baking tray
inserted in a sunken central point. Real space and the abstract
surface were explored, 'The empty pan reads as a mocking declaration
of the art object's contentlessness'.12
Judd's early sculptures were makeshift and rudimentary, made by
himself, before he enlisted professional fabricators to produce
most of his work, under his supervision. Against the dramatic and
effusive (and culturally dominant) Abstract Expressionism works
of the same period, Judd's work was described, by Harold Rosenberg
among others, as boring. As I approached the retrospective at Tate
Modern earlier this month, I half expected to react the same way.
What I did not expect was to find a level of surprise and freshness
about the large, factory-made works. Nor to feel comforted or inspired,
and yet I did. The works are pure, they are thrilling and contemplative.
Judd himself was in no doubt of his aims. He wanted the viewer to
be cleansed of the usual preoccupations of a work of art, 'of falsely
climactic emphases, of susceptibility to tricks of illusionism,
and of the restless drive to penetrate behind 'mere' appearances'.13
Judd put objects such as an open aluminium box lined with plexiglass
in an art context and, unsurprisingly, met with a degree of hostility
and rejection. The fact that these objects were not made by Judd
himself seemed to aggravate his critics further. Judd wanted a level
of control over the actual physical details of an object; by contracting
an 'expert' worker to do so in Judd's view, increased his control.
Donald Judd (1928-1994) became one of the most influential artists
in America in the second half of the 20th century. This major survey
of his work opened at Tate Modern on 5 February 2004. It is the
first full exhibition of Judd's sculptures and coincides with the
tenth anniversary of his death. It is appropriate that Nicholas
Serota, Director of the Tate since 1988, should curate the show,
since he has championed Minimalism for decades. The exhibition includes
some 40 works. It begins with a series of early paintings and handmade
works from the early 1960s; the progression from two- to three-dimensional
work is shown. The exhibition explores the development of Judd's
new and original vocabulary. Through factory-made pieces he was
able to create large floor and wall-based works in the 1960s and
1970s. The materials used were not orthodox materials but included
galvanised iron, steel, plexiglass, plywood and polished copper.
The highly coloured wall pieces of bolted aluminium from the 1980s
and the beautiful painted plywood and plexiglass sculpture from
1993 are at once subtle and spectacular. This is a fine exhibition,
a credit to Serota and Tate Modern. It acts as an important reminder
of the seminal thoughts and artistic manifestations of America in
the 1960s: austerity, elegance, altruism and independence.
Dr Janet McKenzie
References
1. Shi D. The Simple Life. New York: OUP, 1985: 278
2. Judd D. Complaints, Part 1. Studio International
1969; 177(910): 184.
3. Judd D. A long discusssion not about master-pieces but about
why there are so few of them. Art and America. 1984; 72:
11.
4. Shiff R. A space of one to one: Donald Judd. New York:
Pace Wildenstein, 2002: 6.
5. Judd D. Studio International, op cit, p.184.
6. Ibid, p.184.
7. Ibid, p.184.
8. Baker, K. Minimalism: Art of Circumstance. New York: Abbeville
Press, 1988: 9.
9. Ibid, p.9
10. Ibid, p.10.
11. Ibid, p.16.
12. Ibid, p.56.
13. Ibid, p.58.
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