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Dimensions: each: 6 by 27 by 24 in. 15.2 by 68.6 by 70 cm.
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Provenance: Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Peder Bonnier Inc., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1980
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Exhibited: Odradek, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, The Prying Game, February 1998
Odradek, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, Odradek, September 1998 - December 1998
Odradek, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, Positioning, February 1999
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Notes: Donald Judd is one of the key figures who dared to change the course of modern sculpture. Working in New York in the 1960's, Judd became known as one of prominent figures of 'Minimalism' - but it was a label that he strongly rejected. Although he shared many of the principles identified with Minimalist art, like the use of industrial materials to create abstract works that emphasize the purity of color, form and the physical properties of space, Judd's real aim was to create an art that used "real materials in real space", objects that occupied three-dimensional space and rejected illusionism. He baptized them 'specific objects', a term that stresses their neutral, discrete nature, as opposed to 'sculpture', which is associated with the hand-crafted art of an earlier era. By 1966 Judd had established an essential vocabulary of forms ? 'stacks', 'boxes' and 'progressions' ? which preoccupied him for the next thirty years.
The stacks, of which Untitled is a majestic example, consist of ten units placed vertically on the wall, where the space between the units is the same as the space occupied by a single unit. Judd exploited all the potential of this form, experimenting with different colors and materials from 1966 until 1994, the date of his death. In the present work, Judd combines together metal (galvanized iron) and Plexiglas, an association that fascinated him as early as 1967. David Batchelor notes, "Plexiglas offered a quality of color and surface which was intrinsic yet intense, and Judd's many stacks look like experiments in combinations of different metals with Plexiglas of different colors and degrees of transparency and opacity. The resulting works can become almost fluid or almost crystalline as they shine or glow. Colors reflect off each other and bleed onto the supporting wall; highlights glint at the right-angled edges and corners; surfaces dissolve and then reassert themselves as the viewer moves around; planes become mirrors reflecting other planes in the work or beyond it. The colors both hold the work together and begin to break it apart. The excess of color and reflection is often at least partially held in by the repeated geometry of the work, but sometimes it is also emphasized by the same geometry as each mirror-like surface is itself mirrored" (David Batchelor, "Everything as Color" in Exh. Cat., Tate Modern, Donald Judd, London, 2004, p.74).
Any reference to individual craftsmanship or artistic handiwork has been eliminated in the Stacks, and the composition has no limited boundaries. Yet it remains part of a potential limitless system based on a singular principle of ordering. The defining elements of Donald Judd's unique brand of minimalism - precise geometry of the work, frank and unornamented beauty, clarity of construction, and safeguard of the materials' character find a splendid application in Untitled. The form of the work is determined by simple rules of proportion and arithmetic, and the vertical intervals establish a direct connection between the sculpture, the viewer and the space in which both stand. Nicholas Serota notes that "the viewer reads the sculpture by scanning the relationship between the parts of the sculpture and the dimensions of the room." (ibid, p.104). With Untitled Judd has indeed succeeded in opening new ways for sculpture and, more extensively, for art, where "the space of art is made by thought" (Donald Judd, 1994, p. 70).
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