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30/1/2003

Donald Judd

Menil Collection, Houston

In the early 1960s, Minimalism emerged as a movement diametrically opposed to the then dominant Abstract Expressionism and helped redirect aesthetic discourse in America. Reacting against the prevailing tendency toward gestural, intuitive expression and embracing an unprecedented focus on contemplation in art, Minimalism dealt solely with material and spatial conditions. Donald Judd (1928-1994) was one of the most significant artists to develop Minimalism (although he shunned the term). Along with Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, he championed the absence of representation or reference in a work through the novel use of non-art materials and industrial processes.
When his work emerged on the New York art scene in 1963, Judd was already recognized as a philosopher turned art historian and critic. Born in Missouri in 1928, he studied art history and philosophy at Columbia University from 1949 to 1953. Beginning in 1948 Judd had also begun quietly painting conventional portraiture and landscapes, work that evolved into garden and bridge motifs. By 1960, these paintings had become semi-abstract, with an inclination toward three-dimensional objects.
In 1962, Judd's philosophical, critical, and aesthetic studies culminated in the unexpected creation of artworks he called Specific Objects. Composed of forms lacking recognizable everyday reference, such as squares, blocks, and triangles, and rendered through a combination of mediums, notably Plexiglas, aluminum, iron, and wood, they were seemingly neither painting nor sculpture. Judd embarked on a lifelong philosophical commitment to variations on these Specific Objects and to changing the spectator's relationship both to art object and to museum space.

'Donald Judd. Early Work 1955-1968' is the first comprehensive presentation of this seminal artist's early works, exhibiting not only the Specific Objects that launched his career as an artist, but also works from his years of preparation and study. Co-organized by the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany and The Menil Collection, the exhibition introduces lesser known paintings and drawings from the mid 1950s and early 1960s that Judd himself identified, shortly before his untimely death in 1996, as key to his development. Assembled from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, including a substantial body of works never before loaned by the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas, the exhibition tracks for the first time the complexity of Judd's early artistic achievement.

Curated by Thomas Kellein, director of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, with assistance from Marianne Stockbrand, director of the Chinati Foundation, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Kellein and Judd.

Museum Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday, 11:00 am to 7:00 pm

Image: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 20), 1961. Oil, wax, and sand on canvas, 45 x 45 inches . Judd Foundation, Marfa, Texas
Copyright Judd Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Menil Collection
1515 Sul Ross
Houston, Texas 77006
Tel: 713-525-9400
Fax: 713-525-9444

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