Lot Essay
Donald Judd was one of the most important and influential artists of the latter half of the twentieth century. In his writings as a critic for various art journals in the early 1960s, he articulated the new sensibility of artists such as Frank Stella, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, who were eliminating the personal gesture of the Abstract Expressionists in favor of a reductive, cool abstraction. Judd's own work stressed logic and clarity to the point that he rejected painting as inherently illusionistic, and from 1963 on he concentrated on creating sculpture, which is by its very nature a more concrete mode of expression.
Judd's sculpture of the 1960s evolved in two general series: wall-mounted 'progressions' of the mid-1960s, and multi-part floor pieces whose repeated units are, like Untitled, 1968, set out at equal intervals. These pieces were fabricated in machine shops, of common industrial materials like aluminum or galvanized iron and Plexiglas. Their high finish is anything but common, and their rigorous installation belies any notion of their identity as anything other than fine art objects. The sculptures seem to employ a mathematical system, and the sum of the units create an easily apprehendable, symmetrical whole. The stark geometry is offset by the refined surface and lush color, like the emerald green of Untitled. Judd believed his sculptures to be the logical extension of the all-over field of Pollock's paintings, or the object-nature of Jasper Johns' flag and target paintings: their individual units remain distinct, but are not diluted by being incorporated into a whole.
Judd often created other versions of the same sculpture, utilizing the same formats in a different material or color. Untitled, 1968 is unique. Because of the scale and costs involved in producing these pieces, Judd could not experiment with this form as freely as he did with the wall progressions. According to the Ottawa catalogue raisonné published in 1975, there are six multi-part floor pieces that were made up to that time which utilize a similar type of design for the individual units: large open rectangular forms. Five of these (including this example from the Denver Art Museum) are in museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Collection Ludwig, Cologne.
Judd's sculpture of the 1960s evolved in two general series: wall-mounted 'progressions' of the mid-1960s, and multi-part floor pieces whose repeated units are, like Untitled, 1968, set out at equal intervals. These pieces were fabricated in machine shops, of common industrial materials like aluminum or galvanized iron and Plexiglas. Their high finish is anything but common, and their rigorous installation belies any notion of their identity as anything other than fine art objects. The sculptures seem to employ a mathematical system, and the sum of the units create an easily apprehendable, symmetrical whole. The stark geometry is offset by the refined surface and lush color, like the emerald green of Untitled. Judd believed his sculptures to be the logical extension of the all-over field of Pollock's paintings, or the object-nature of Jasper Johns' flag and target paintings: their individual units remain distinct, but are not diluted by being incorporated into a whole.
Judd often created other versions of the same sculpture, utilizing the same formats in a different material or color. Untitled, 1968 is unique. Because of the scale and costs involved in producing these pieces, Judd could not experiment with this form as freely as he did with the wall progressions. According to the Ottawa catalogue raisonné published in 1975, there are six multi-part floor pieces that were made up to that time which utilize a similar type of design for the individual units: large open rectangular forms. Five of these (including this example from the Denver Art Museum) are in museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Collection Ludwig, Cologne.