Donald Judd Writings

"So, Judd was one of a group of artists who was practicing this genre of art in the 1960s in Manhattan. The term ‘Minimalism’ comes from this text in 1964 by the British art theorist David Wilhelm, who was working in New York at that point; he drew a circle around this particular group of artists that included Judd and Robert Morris and Dan Flavin and some others. He said that their work had “minimal art content,” because these artists were adopting industrial materials, making objects that didn’t look like art. They weren’t making expressive paintings. They weren’t communicating deep emotion. They were just making these objects that stood in front of you in the gallery. To him, ‘minimal’ was this word to describe why they were so uncomfortable, because the viewer does not recognise the usual symbols of an artwork. They don’t recognise information, or narrative, or the attempt to communicate deep feeling, whatever. This is Minimalism. There has been a lot of critical debate over what to call this group of artists. There are other alternatives: ‘ABC art,’ or ‘literal art,’ or ‘boring art.’ But Minimalism is what stuck. And, you know, it’s a great coinage, because we use it a lot today. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . So Judd was making his work at that moment, and working as an art critic as well. He feels this deep need to critically justify and theorize around his work. So he also writes this essay called ‘Specific Objects,’ in which he draws another circle around basically the same group of artists, but instead of calling their art ‘minimal,’ he says, no, these artists are making specific objects. They’re not trying to create a narrative, they’re just trying to create . . . well, the great line in the essay is an artwork “needs only to be interesting.” As in, creating visual interest is the only necessary goal of the artwork. He was upset to be called a Minimalist for the entirety of his life. I think Judd, and many other artists, felt slighted by this word ‘minimal’ because it gave too much of a suggestion that they weren’t doing anything, or that they had failed in some way. Judd always thought it was a mistake that he was labelled a Minimalist, and thought that Minimalism as a movement did not exist, and was just an invention of critics. There was no movement, in his mind. And he was kind of right, actually, because there was no coherent, Minimalist idea. The artists were not necessarily colluding. They were not identifying with each other. No. They were all very independent. And they all had different ideas of what Minimalism was. So, at least in a formal art context, I think it’s a mistake to talk about a single Minimalism, and instead we should talk about how these different artists have approached the idea of minimalism in different ways—even though it all ends up looking very similar. Judd was never one to accept any labels; his entire practice was kind of anti-label. His lifestyle was as well. He moved out of Manhattan, far out into the Texas desert, to a place called Marfa . He produced some of his most famous artworks there. Yeah. I think Judd got stuck in his own trap. In the mid 1960s, he fought against Minimalism, but then kind of proposed his own term for what was going on. Then by trying to escape the art world in Manhattan, by trying to leave behind all the bullshit and move out into the desert, by trying to escape and find a way to make an art that was independent and self-sustaining and had no context, essentially, he made it ever more into its own separate thing. By moving to the desert and creating this life for himself, he enshrined Minimalism as a way of living, a holistic approach to life, rather than just an aesthetic decision. So, to me, Judd pioneered a lot of the things that we associate with the minimalist lifestyle. He lived in a giant warehouse loft in Soho in Manhattan. In Marfa, he bought these airplane hangars and industrial buildings and converted them into home spaces and studios. So he evolved this aestheticised way of living, in very large spaces. He also started building his own furniture, which he didn’t think of as art necessarily, because it fulfilled a function. But simply by making furniture that looked kind of like his artwork, he was proposing, maybe subconsciously, that this was not just an object in a gallery, but a way of existing in the world. The Minimal aesthetic could be applied not just to a sculpture, but to a chair or a table or a bookshelf or a building. Without Judd, maybe we wouldn’t have associated Minimalism with architecture and design. And I think that his creating that kind of lifestyle led the way toward the commodification of Minimalism as a consumer good. There’s a path from Judd’s loft in Soho, to more people living in lofts in Soho, and to artists moving out to Marfa. Eventually, Calvin Klein did a fashion photoshoot in Marfa. And art galleries continue to adopt this very spare, austere, industrial aesthetic. Over time, that mode that Judd pioneered has become more and more mainstream, and made Marfa a product, instead of what it was for Judd: a very personal choice. So to me, Judd’s minimalism is really about expressing your personal taste and making a very intentional decision about everything that’s around you, everything that you own or make for yourself. But later versions of minimalism have just adopted what Judd chose for himself as the ideal. I want to get back to minimalism as a way of making your own decisions, of forcing yourself to be more aware of how things in your life fit together, and what your taste is. Instead, I think often minimalism encourages us to just take the shortcut. It’s like, oh, I can just buy it and have the perfect stuff."