Featured in The Arts Intel Report
Donald Judd
4 September 2023
BY JACK SULLIVAN
Named "one of the 20th century's most significant American artists" by The Wall Street Journal, the late Donald Judd was a leading practitioner and theoretician of art in the second half of that century. He was often called a Minimalist, but he rejected that term. Judd left representation behind because he believed that "Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface." He'd studied philosophy at Columbia University, and his always original writings on art are as fascinating as his sculptures.
Indeed, Judd's 1965 essay "Specific Objects" was groundbreaking: "It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting."
This fall, a selection of Judd's pioneering artworks will be on view in Seoul, South Korea. Presented by Thaddeus Ropac Seoul, the exhibition is curated by the artist's son Flavin Judd, the artistic director of the Judd Foundation.
