Donald Judd Analysis

Donald Judd
A simple three dimensional (3-D) cube, circle, or rectangle you may ask how could this possibly be a work of art. Some artists don’t follow the traditional interests of expression that are elicited from painting with paint brushes. Different mediums help to create different experiences for both the artist and the viewer. Artists such as Donald Judd take a different approach to their work and look to create something new. To appreciate and understand Donald Judd’s “Untitled (blue)” you must first learn about the art movement Minimalism.
Most people are unaware of Donald Judd and his work, and the people who may know about his work don’t understand it or why he does what he does. As quoted by Donald Judd “... I didn’t want to get
This movement was full of artists with similar goals and beliefs in art such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Anne Truitt, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris. Coined by the art philosopher Richard Wollheim, the term “minimalism” was used to describe artwork that is highly simplified or austere (Deller). Minimalists works are often composed of multiple, uniform elements such as bricks, blocks, or sections of tubular lighting (Little 138). Donald Judd was one of the most famous leaders of this minimalism movement. The artists of this movement believed that they didn’t need to paint the traditional realistic picture in order to get an emotion from the viewer. Judd’s work perfectly resembles the description of minimalism, he repetitively uses basic forms of squares, rectangles, or circles to arouse certain emotions (Little 138). Judd used the phrase “specific object” meaning an artwork which was neither painting nor sculpture but composed of self-sufficient elements, each of which could exist independently (Little 138). Donald Judd disliked the word minimalism in describing his work because he thought it implied that something was missing. On the contrary, Judd believed that by removing the problem of illusion and incorporating industrialised, machine-made materials the artist could create a physical presence that would result in greater thoughtfulness by the
He began creating his famous Boxes around 1963 (Rugoff). Judd used industrialized materials to give his work an impersonal factory aesthetic (Donald). “His alterations of these basic volumes continually affect and reshape one another by pitting the relative against the actual, the symmetrical against the asymmetrical and logical against the arbitrary” (Smith). The boxes that he created achieved a geometric severity that avoided both the personal rhetoric of abstract expressionism and idealized purity of constructivism (Rugoff). When you go to see Judd's work in a museum you are not allowed to touch it. It’s impossible to put your head between any two boxes and look straight up and down which means the sculptures cannot be fully seen or known (Brenson). This leaves a sense of imagination for the