ART CITIES:N York-Donald Judd Paintings 1960-61
Donald Judd is a landmark figure in the history of art. In the 1950s, he studied philosophy and art history and took classes at the Art Students League in New York. He was first publicly recognized as an art critic, writing reviews for Arts magazine from 1959–65. It was during this time that he developed from an abstract painter into the producer of the hollow, rectilinear volumes for which he became well known.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Judd Foundation Archive
In the exhibition “Donald Judd: Paintings 1960-1961”, that is housed in his first New York residence and studio, is on presentation a largely understudied part of Donald Judd’s oeuvre, his paintings from the early 1960s incorporate a series of stylistic transitions that reflect his interests and development as an artist. Interested in the scale and physicality of the reigning Abstract Expressionists, Judd began his work as an artist by painting, when the artist was developing his ideas about color, space and exploring the limitations of the flat plane. Oil paintings made between 1956 and 1958 feature irregular shapes that are neither strictly organic nor geometric, whereas in later paintings from 1960 to 1962 Judd made use of repeating forms, a reduced color palette, found objects, and wax and sand to build up the canvas, plywood, or Masonite surfaces. Though he retained a lifelong interest in the aesthetics of painting, in 1962 he abandoned painting as too illusionistic and turned to relief sculpture and then freestanding work. The exhibition marks the first presentation of these works in New York, the nine untitled works in the exhibition, four from 1960 and five from 1961, reflect Judd’s experiments with a variety of techniques and the possibilities for creating non-illusionistic space in two dimensions. Judd incorporated found objects into the support of the paintings and added wax and sand to his paint to create a definite surface. While the paintings were less illusionistic than most contemporary work, given the constraints of painting, Judd could not realize his spatial goals, specifically the creation of actual rather than illusionistic space. In his shift to three dimensions, Judd often used metal, acrylic sheets, and plywood in which color was inherent in the material itself, as opposed to the applied color of painting, which would be characteristic of his work in the forthcoming decades. Only two exhibitions have focused on his early work, a retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (5/5-21/6/18) that then traveled to The Menil Collection (31/1-27/4/2003) and an exhibition of late paintings at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (5/4-24/6/18).
Info: Curator: Flavin Judd, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York, Duration: 22/9-8/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 13:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, https://juddfoundation.org
