FROM DRAWING TO PAINTING
Apparently, Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Modern, was not
prepared to let the name of Donald Judd (1928-1994) silently fade from
our memories - did he not do his utmost to make the man famous in the
first place? Ten years after his death - sixteen years after the last
substantial exhibition - he presents a big retrospective of the work of
the artist who has 'changed the course of modern sculpture''. The
exhibition travels to Düsseldorf (19/06 to 05/09/04) and Basel (02/10 to
09/01/05). Heavy artillery, that makes us ask what has to be canonised
here at all cost.
Who is this master and what everlasting works did he leave to posterity?
BOXES
'Il faut être un homme vivant et un artiste posthume'
Jean Cocteau, Le rappel à l’ordre.
From 1947 to 1953 - in the heydays of the very 'abstract expressionism'
that soon will be promoted as the panacea of the Free World with a
little help from the CIA* - Donald Judd studied at Art Students League
in New York, the College of William and Mary and the Columbia
University. Meanwhile, he is already fully active as an art critic and a
painter. Already in 1957, he has his first show in the Panoramas Gallery
- although from the paintings exhibited there no trace is to be found in
what is announced as the 'first full retrospective'. But things are not
going well with the Action Painting in New York. Andy Warhol comes to
replace Jackson Pollock. Accordingly, the expressionistic gestures on
Judd's canvasses are replaced with a baking tin (1961). 'Illusionism' is
said to be banned in favour of the real two-dimensional surface or the
equally real three-dimensional space.
Donald Judd's stride from 'painting' to 'sculpture' is to be understood
in the broader perspective of the more general anti-mimetic trend, here
in the disguise of anti-illusionism. Already with his ready-mades,
Marcel Duchamp had replaced painting - bluntly dismissed as mere
illusionism - with real three-dimensional objects. Such dadaistic
gesture has been renewed in 1960 by the Nouveaux Réalistes of Pierre
Restany and in 1967 by the Arte Povera of Germano Celant (see also
Kounellis**). With Donald Judd, however, we are dealing neither with
real cars like those of Arman, nor with real horses like those of
Kounellis**. The reason is that Donald Judd rather joins another
anti-mimetic trend: the new geometric abstraction ('hard edge') of
painters like Barnet Newmann,Ad Reinhardt en Frank Stella, who wanted
to break with the 'abstract expressionism' from the school around
Pollock and De Kooning. While Andy Warhol followed the example of
Duchamp, they walk in the footsteps of the old geometric abstraction.
And here we find an equally strong radicalism: even the last traces of
'illusionism', such as the overlap in Mondrian's pictures, are
eliminated: on the flat plane of the canvas equally flat surfaces are
bluntly juxtaposed. After such reduction of the 'illusionistic' canvas
to a two-dimensional plane, only the reduction of the sculpture to a
mere non-illusionistic object in real space is left - providing the
geometrically painted surface with a real third dimension in the vein of
Rietveld who made three-dimensional architectural versions of Mondrian
or of Lissitzky who made three-dimensional versions of his own
paintings.
Donald Judd takes the stride outside the canvas with his 'stack
sculptures'. While Carl André laid bricks on a row in 1964, Donald Judd
aligned boxes on a wall from 1966 onward (an 'abstract' echo of Warhol's
Brillo boxes of 1964?). He repeats this theme in ever changing colours,
sizes and materials.
What is presented as a revolutionary stride in the development of
sculpture, makes the artist, who nearly started painting, famous at
once. Already in 1968 a retrospective (!) is dedicated to his work in
the Whitney Museum of American Art. and via a big show of minimalists in
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971 Donald is featured
in the Venice Biennale in 1980 and the Dokumenta in Kassel in 1982.
However much he is celebrated in the galleries and the museums, Donald
Judd wants to have his works exhibited properly in an appropriate museum
of his own already during his life-time. In 1972 he moves toMarfa in
Texas where in 1986 a renovated complex is opened to exhibit his works
and that of other artists such as Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg en Dan
Flavin.
Let us have a closer look at his work.
COMPOSITION
Donald Judd uses the simplest compository principles.
That applies in the first place to the elements he uses: a cube is
constructed according to one single principle: all the sides are placed
at right angles. More simple still would have been a sphere, but that
threatened perhaps to remind Donald Judd of Brancusi's still organic
heads reduced to the shape of an egg.
And it applies also for the combination of the elements. Donald Judd's
most cherished principle is the addition in one dimension into a row or
in two dimensions into a chequered pattern. A more mechanistic
composition is not conceivable. Everything that could remind of the
already more organic progression, let alone of the golden section, is
banned.
Meanwhile, the confrontation of Donald Judd's box with Brancusi's egg
makes it clear how little Brancusi's 'sculpture' partakes of an egg and,
conversely, how much it partakes of a head! When, as with Donald Judd,
geometrising ends up in pure geometry, the dialectic between organic and
geometric, typical of every more subtle kind of
mimesis, is suspended
altogether and collapses into a monolithic reality. And in the
installation of such rigid geometric reality, a nearly concealed
anti-mimetic impulse is at work. With Donald Judd, the geometric is not
only the real - the very opposite of art - but also the an-organic, the
soulless - the very opposite of the human. In that sense Donald Judd's
cube is the pure negation of the primeval sculpture: the human body - in
sharp contrast to Brancusi's egg that is precisely its quintessence!
MATERIALS
A similar anti-mimetic impulse is at work in the choice of the
materials. The same rejection of 'abstract expressionism' and action
painting that made Andy Warhol resort to the silk-screen, makes Donald
Judd resort to plywood, galvanised iron, stainless steel, plexiglass and
enamelled or anodized aluminium. In doing so, he joins the preference of
Constructivism, de Stijl and Bauhaus for machine-made materials devoid
of every trace of the human hand. After the example of the
conceptualists, Donald Judd even lets his work execute through
specialized craftsmen (see: Weiner***) .
COLOUR
What you see is what you see
Frank Stella
Just like Mondrian, Donald Judd holds that in traditional art 'the
necessities of representation inhibited the use of colour': Colour
cannot be pure when shadows have to suggest rounding. And just like
Mondrian, Donald Judd concludes that the painter should concentrate on
pure colour. He also refers to Frank Stella: 'What you see is what you
see'.
No doubt, Donald Judd has brought colour back to where it has always
been at home: in the domain of the ready-made colours of nature - from
the green of the grass to the blue of the sky, not to mention the
coloured patterns on flowers and animals - or the domain of theman-made
colours with which man has from way back embellished his furniture, his
carpets, and the inner and outer walls of his houses.
And no doubt, colour 'works' in that domain of nature and man-made
objects - the world of design. But it is not because someone makes
colour 'speak' - produce whatever effect - that he is making art. Colour
only comes to belong to the domain of art when it goes the opposite
direction as the one that Mondrian or Donald Judd had it walk: when the
red that we see is no longer the red of paint on a carrier, but the
blush on the cheek of a girl that is conjured up on a canvas. Despite
Frank Stella: when 'you do not see what you see...'
And that cannot but draw our attention to the rather poor quality of
Donald Judd's theorising. The red of a blush does not differ in
principle from the red of a painted blush. What distinguishes a real
blush from a painted one is not some characteristic of colour, but of
the surface that reflects the colour: is it the skin of a cheek, then we
are dealing with reality; is it paint on a canvas, then we are dealing
with art (mimesis). It is a question of the transition from blood in
skin to paint on canvas, hence, and not of the purification of colour by
removing shadow.
And that catches the eye all the more, when we realise that the colour
of real painted objects is not at all pure, unless the object is lighted
with a constant artificial light from all sides, or when it is lighting
itself, like Dan Flavin's neon tubes. That Donald Judd's rejection of
shadows thus turns out to be a merely inappropriate way of rejecting
mimesis as such, becomes fully apparent when we realise that the effect
of many of his works depends precisely on the very presence of shadows
and reflections of the colour of one surface on the other that he was so
fiercely rejecting in 'illusionistic painting'!.
SPACE
And Donald Judd's anti-mimetic fervour comes to its apogee in his
treatment of space. Donald Judd prides himself on the fact that in his
'stack sculptures' the empty space between the boxes is an integral part
of the sculpture as a whole. That is not new at all, at least not in
architecture, where columns, obeliscs, towers and the like are not so
much there as an end in themselves, but rather as a means of structuring
and articulating the surrounding space.
Also sculptures - above all sculptures from the time when people knew
how to dispose them in space - are primarily meant as beacons in
architectural space. Think of the Karlsbrücke in Prague, where the
sculptures are in first instance a kind of columns articulating the
whole, just like the arches. And that holds equally true of Bernini's
colonnade on Saint Peter's square in Rome. As soon as we concentrate on
a single sculpture, however, the real space wherein it is erected
disappears, and imaginary space unfolds, where the sculpture is no
longer the equivalent of a column, but begins to conjure up imaginary
beings. The comparison with theinstruments of the orchestra imposes
itself: as long as they are tuning, they are part of a real soundscape,
but as soon as they begin to play, musical space unfolds in the
dimension of theimaginary.****
New, hence, is not Donald Judd's structuring of space - therein, fare
more apt architects have preceded him already for centuries, if not
millennia. New is that, under the guise of a revolution in sculpture, he
reduces sculpture to a mere pedestal and proceeds to sell us such real
thing for a sculpture - although the same Donald Judd conversely asserts
that he has made a 'revolutionary stride' by liberating sculpture from
the pedestal. 'It is impossible for people to understand that placement
on the floor and the absence of a pedestal were inventions. I invented
them' (cat. p. 148).
Unlike sculptors, hence, Donald Judd does not transform his material
into an imaginary being. He merely transforms the real world, just like
architects. Or to be more precise: like an interior designer. For,
because Donald Judd continues to understand himself as an artist, he
does not so much transform the open space as rather the interior of a
museum. We do not deny that Donald Judd's 'free (fine) interior design'
has its merits. It suffices to refer to highlights as the Marfa. But
Judd's work cannot but fade in comparison with the feats of the
anonymous architects who built the gothic cathedrals, who rather than
disguise their creations as sculpture, knew all too well their due place
- and that of sculpture - or stained glass - as well.
That is why, even when we do not challenge Donald Judd's qualities as a
free (fine) designer, we deny him a position in the history of sculpture
- or in the history of art in general. Donald Judd has nothing in common
with Rodin or Brancusi, but everything with figures like Mies van de
Rohe. He does not belong in the history of art, but in the history of
architecture or interior design - or the history of 'free' or 'fine'
design in general, hand in hand with his true colleagues: designers like
Panamarenko and Goldsworthy.
THEORY
Aesthetics is to the artist as ornithology is to the birds
Barnett Newman
Although Donald Judd is a Columbia graduate, it suffices to read a text
like 'Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in particular'
to become aware of the lamentable quality of his philosophising, even
when it features in the prestigious catalogue of Tate Modern. We already
discussed how insufficient his theory of colour is. But Judd's texts
brim over with inaccuracies. Thus, he refuses to call his creations
'sculptures', because sculpture 'means carving to me' (cat. p. 61) As if
the way in which something is made determines whether it is a sculpture
or not. Hand-made objects like the heads of Brancusi, as well
'industrial' creations like Naum Gabo's marvellous 'Constructive Head
No. 2' are genuine sculptures, not by virtue of the way in which they
are made, but by virtue of the fact that they represent something,
unlike Judd's boxes (see:
Mimesis and Abstraction). Instead of speaking
such plain language, Donald Judd, in his famous 'Specific Objects'
(1965) prefers to introduce a new kind or art that is neither painting
nor sculpture. The 'label' 'specific object' that Donald Judd wants to
introduce instead of 'painting' or 'sculpture' is merely a rather clumsy
attempt to mask that he is no longer making paintings or sculptures
indeed - no longer art as such - but mere real objects. In other words:
that he is no longer an artist but has become a 'free' or 'fine'
designer.
That does not prevent Donald Judd from continuing to pose as an artist -
and many others to feature him as such. Worse still: figures like Rudy
Fuchs emphatically put him in line with masters like Van Eyck and
Raphael as if to convince themselves that their protégé is really an
artist, and not a mere designer. How else to explain that there is no
mention of Sluter, Michelangelo or Bernini - would that perhaps have
hindered the raising of Donald Judd on an artistic pedestal in a museum
of fine arts?
The Britannica is wrong, hence, when it describes Donald Judd as an
'American minimalist sculptor' - 'minimalist free (of 'fine') designer'
would have been far more accurate. And completely wrong goes Serota when
he asserts in his foreword to the catalogue of the Tate exhibition that
'Donald Judd has changed the course of modern sculpture'...
Stefan Beyst, July 2004
* See Frances Stonor Saunders,'
Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the
Cultural Cold War', Granta Books, London .
** See 'Kounellis: the metamorphoses of Apollo'
*** See 'Lawrence Weiner: and flesh became word'
**** See:'Musical space and its inhabitants'.
CONSULTED TEXTS
AGEE, Willam C.: 'Donald Judd: Sculpture/Catalogue', Pace Wildenstein
1994.
BATTCOCK, Gregory (Editor): 'Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology',
University of California Press, 1995.
BLOEMINK, Barbara & CUNNINGHAM, Joseph: 'Design Art: Functional Objects
from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread', Merrell Holberton, 2004
BOIS,
Yves-Alain: 'Donald Judd: New Sculpture'. Trans. Gregory Sim, New York,
Pace Gallery, 1991.
ELGER, Dietmar ed. :'Donald Judd: Colorist', Texts
by William C. Agee, Dietmar Elger, Martin Engler, Donald Judd. Hatje
Cantz, 1999
HASKELL, Barbara: 'Donald Judd', New York: Whitney Museum
of American Art in association with W. W. Norton & Company, 1988. Texts
by Barbara Haskell and D.onald Judd.
JUDD Donald: 'Fifteen Works'. New
York: Heiner Friedrich Gallery, 1977.
JUDD DONALD TATE CATALOGUE with
texts by Nicholas Serota, Rudi Fuchs, Richard Shiff, David Batchelor,
David Raskin, Donald Judd, Marianne Stockebrand, Jeffrey Kopie,D.A.P./Tate,
London 2004
JUDD Donald: Prints 1951 - 1993 foreword Rudy Fuchs,
Director of the Haags Gemeentemuseum.
JUDD, Donald:"Art and
Architecture", Vortrag am 20. September 1983 an der Yale University,
Department of Art and Architecture; veröffentlicht in: Donald Judd.
Complete Writings 1975–1986, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 1987, S. 25-36;
dt. Auszug in: Donald Judd. Architektur, Münster 1990, S. 143-145.
JUDD, Donald: 'Complete Writings
1959-1975', The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,
2005.
JUDD, Donald;
NOEVER, Peter; FUCHS, Rudi; HUCK, Brigitte: 'Donald
Judd: Architecture', Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004.
KOENIG, Kasper Ed.:
'Donald Judd: Complete Writings, 1959–1975. Halifax: The Press of Nova
Scotia College of Art and Design, in association with New York
University Press, New York, 1975.
KRAUS, Rosalind E. and SMITHSON,
Robert: 'Donald Judd: Early Fabricated Work. New York: Pace Wildenstein,
1998.
KUSPIT, Donald: 'The Dialectic and Decadence' Allworth Press, New
York: 2000).
LYNNE COOKE: Essay
McKENZIE,
Janet:'Donald Judd Tate Modern, London 5 February-25 April 2004', Studio
International 6/4/2004 http://www.studio-international.co.uk/ sculpture/
donald_judd.htm
MEYER, James: 'Minimalism, Themes and Movements', Phaidon Press, 2005.
MORGAN, Robert: 'Rethinking Judd' Sculpture
magazine April 2001 - Vol.20 No.3SMITH, Brydon: 'Donald Judd: Ottawa:
National Programme of the National Gallery of Canada, 1975. Catalogue
raisonné by Brydon Smith. Texts by Dan Flavin and Roberta
Smith.
SAUNDERS, Frances Stonor: ' Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the
Cultural Cold War', Granta Books, London
STOCKEBRANDT, Marianne (Ed.):
'Donald Judd: Architektur. Trans. Brigitte Kalthoff. Münster:
Westfälischer Kunstverein, 1989.
ZAUG, Remy: 'Die List der Unschuld. Das
Wahrnehmen einer Skulptur', Eindhoven 1982.
referrers:
Sprueth Magers