Untitled 89-46

"Unpainted plywood had entered Judd's vocabulary in 1972. Although its warmth of color and complex surface patterns were intrinsic, its soft surface was less rigorously precise and less luminous than that of metal - as if on some level Judd was trying to counter the critical perception of his work as decorative and hedonistic... For Judd, the choice of plywood was practical as well as aesthetic: because it was inexpensive, it allowed him to expand his scale and to explore multiple permutations on single themes, which he had previously only in his drawings." (B. Haskell, in: 'Donald Judd', New York 1988, p.96).
'Untitled' from 1989 is a late yet prime example of Judd's work with plywood. Although Judd's more popular pieces were executed in metal, plywood is a material that actually suited Donald Judd better - the roughness of the cheap wood, as well as its 'industrial' look, no doubt attracted Judd's formal sensibilities.
The characteristics of this material enabled Judd to execute what he called his "three dimensional objects". In Judd's own words: "Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors... Obviously, anything in the three dimensions can be any shape, regular or irregular, and can have any relation to the wall, floor, ceiling, room, rooms or exterior or none at all. (...) The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting." (In: 'Donald Judd. White and Grey. Complete Writings', New York 1975, p. 116.)