Donald Judd

Truthfully, I don't know a lot about Donald Judd... but as a minimalist sculptor who seems to have specialized in making boxes, I feel that his presence on my 308 blog now is unavoidable.

When I worked as a security guard at the Baltimore Museum of Art, they had a Judd box on display in the contemporary galleries. It was about three feet high, made of AC grade plywood, and a constant source of annoyance. It was situated in the center of a small room with large paintings on all four walls, so several times a day, we would have to step forward and say "Please do not touch the sculpture" to museum goers who were absorbed in the paintings, and who were completely unaware that they were leaning on anything resembling art. (It was around the time that this piece was made that painter Ad Reinhardt said "Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting") We would literally stand in front of it when young school groups came through, because to a child just barely taller than the box, it was impossible for them to resist walking right up to it, grabbing the edge and pulling themselves up - the irresistable urge to see what was inside.

Inside the box was nothing much, just another panel of plywood. When the galleries were empty, I liked to stare at it and try and figure out all the angles... it must have drove Judd's carpenter up a wall. The panel was situated inside the box, like a lid that had collapsed or fallen inward, except that the surface touched all four corners, meaning that it wasn't a square or rectangle but a kind of distorted, stretched shape. What puzzled me most was that each corner was at a different height - one touching at one quarter height, one each at one half and three quarters, and the fourth touching just so the top edge.

I hated it.

For a long time, anyway. It was the only thing in the whole museum that I really had a hard time with. I spent a lot of time staring at it and writing about it when the galleries were empty, which was most of the time. Minimalism can be hard to access at first, but (like most things, really) what it takes most is time.

What eventually struck me about the piece was how it could appear both empty and full, depending on which direction you approached it from. From the entrance, walking towards it and fixing my eyes on the corner, it was almost a surprise to see there was something inside, even if it was just more plywood. Walking all the way around it, the plane inside the box seemed to shift like a wave, revealing all its odd angles, and then seeming to disappear completely. The other guards thought I was crazy, circling and staring at the Box, which was universally disliked by the security staff. For such an inelegant and possibly even ugly thing, this stupid plywood box, it suddenly seemed to mean a lot.

To make a long story short, Judd eventually went a little crazy with people installing his works incorrectly and letting other people casually lean against them while they looked at painting instead. He moved to the middle of nowhere in Texas, got his hands on some 340 acres, and set up his own museum. The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX is the result.

At the center of the Chinati are Judd's 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, as seen in the photo above. "Each of the 100 works has the same outer dimensions (41 x 51 x 72 inches), although the interior is unique in every piece."

A long post, I know. And inconclusive... I'll leave it at that. Just something to think about.