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150 FIG.4.1 Installation view, Don Judd, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 27 FebruarY-24 March 1968 Curator, William C. Agee THE OPENING OF OONALD JUDD'S solo exhibition at catalogue raisonn. designation Untitled rOSS 79] [fig. 4.3]), the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1968 sealed his "As an object, the box was very much there ... Its. whole reputation as a central figure in contemporary art. William purpose seemed to be the declaration of some blunt quid C. Agee, the curator, had packed Judd's sheet-metal sculp dityand nothing more."'ln the years since, Judd's works tures fairly tightly into what at least one critic described as have likewise appeared "blunt, unambiguous," "completely a warehouselike installation,and the tidy right angles and present," "just existing," and "simply 'there.' "5 Each sculp repetitive modularity of the works made a neat match to ture has asserted itself as· "simply another thing in the world the stone tiles and concrete ceUing coffers of the museum's of things."'ln the 1967 essay "Art andObjecthood," which two-year-old Marcel Breuer building (fig. 4.1).' Sitting remains the single most influential account of Minimalism, brightly in the middle of the space, Untitled (OSS 128) (fig. Michael Fried characterized Judd's work (together with that 4.2) exemplified the overall appearance of the exhibition: of Robert Morris and others) as a "literalist art" that insisted a shiny rectangle of amber Plexiglas with a thin and hollow on its own occupation of ordinary space and time? By the stainless.-steel core. Critics conSidering the works were time of the Whitney exhibition, literafist characterizations undecided about their meanings, and their importance. of Judd's work predominated, with one clause becoming Some dismissed the show as empty novelty ("He is about as paradigmatic. Glueck's review appeared under the title "A minimal as can be .... Do you suppose that next year, with Box Is a Box Is a Box," while the anonymous critic at Time the skirts, art will go midi?"), while others lauded it as newly wrote, "For Judd, a box is a box is a box, and nothing more." canonical ("The most important event of the month ... A year later, Rose concluded, "[Thelprincipal statement [of a tremendous success").2 Judd's early Minimalist works] appeared to be the tautology Although the responses plainly lacked any certainty that a box is a box is a box."B over the critical terms in play CArtnews titled their review If we find echoes here of Stuart Preston's declaration, "Judd the Obscure")' a cluster of related phrases appeared in a review of Jasper Joh ns, that "a flashlight is a flashlight again and again. James R. Mellow, writing for the New York is a flashlight," then we should hear an assonance, too, be Times; saw Judd's.sculptures as "a matter of brilliant factual tween Mellow's understanding of Judd's floor box and John ity," while Jane Harrison Cone emphasized the sculptures' Ashbery's view of White Flag: "It has tremendous-though "inescapable factuality," and Grace Glueck called the works silent-impact. It is there, though for what purpose it would "actual, specific facts- in themselves."3Indeed, critics had be hard to say.'" Despite these critical parallels, the most already been tripping over the factual quality of Judd's work cursory glance at Judd's work makes it clear that his brand for a couple of years. In 1965, Barbara Rose had claimed of literalism, especially after the Minimalist turn of 1964-65, "concreteness and substantial presence" as the "prime is quite different from those of the other artists treated in quality" of Judd's sculpture. In 1966, Lucy Lippard had added this book. Judd's Minimalist sculpture has none of Johns's that "[Judd's] metal and plastic boxes are among the most heft or palpability, none of Rauschenberg's discordance, factual and radically assertive works today," while Mel- none of Oldenburg'S mad mark-making. Instead, it is thin, low had written of an untitled floor box (now known by its serial, often shiny; the artist directly declared that he "didn't 1 I I I I I I I I I I! I I FIG. 4.2 i Donald Judd Untitled (DSS 728), 1968 Stainless steel and Plexiglas, overall 33 x 68 x 48 in. (83·8 x 172.7 x 121.9 em), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchase, with fu'nds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc. FIG.4.3 Donald Judd Untitled (DSS 79), 1966 Aluminum, 40 x 72 X 51 in. (101.6 x 182.9 x 129.5 cm) Collection of Judd foundation FIG. 4.4 Donald Judd Untitled (D5555), 1964 Brass and galvanized iron with blue lacquer, 40 '12 X 84 x 6 3/4 in . .(102.9 x 2134 x '7.2 cm) National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Purchased 1974 A LOFT WITHOUT LABOR: JUDD 153 want to make just lumps."10 If we wish to unpack what the explanation." It also seems to me a quality that allows the critics might have meant in diagnosing a factuality in Judd's sculptures to speak with a unique fullness to the changes sculpture, we will have to consider the specifics of the case. facing New York at the time, and especially (far more than For one thing, the literalist reception of Judd's work the other artists we have considered) to the rapid transfor was complicated from the beginning by ~mother, 'Competing mation'of the city's economy-its shift away from manufac strain in the criticism. Take for example Harold Rosenberg's turing and toward the provision of financial S€rvices. 1967 claim that many Minimalist sculptures, even while "affirm(ing] the independent existence of the art object as To be sure, Judd's own statements underscor:ed his antipa meaningful in itself' also aimed to "disguise themselves as thy toward representation. Art historians have leaned es I ordinary objectsLJ ... to pass as machine or building parts, pecially heavily on Judd's essay "Specific Objects" {"Three as those of two or three years earlier passed as billboards or dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of comic strips."l1 In Rosenberg's view, Minimalism eschewed illusionismLl ... one of the salient and most objectionable reference and quoted the built environment at the same -relics of European art") and on his radio interview with time. Other critics betrayed a similar ambivalence. Despite Bruce Glaser and Lucy Lippard {"I'm using actual space")." its claim that "for Judd a box is a box is a box," Time pro As early as 1963, Judd had emphasized the importance of posed that viewers might ask, "What is a box ... if not "actual materials, actual color, and actual space," and he a coffin, a house, a treasure chest?"12 told a New York symposium audience in 1966, "I'd like work Rosalind Krauss pursued architettural references in a that didn't allude to other things and was a specific thing 1966 essay titled "Allusion and Illusion in Donald Judd," see in itself."17 ing similarities between Untitled (DSS 55) (fig. 4.4) and "the For Judd, the primary problem with pictorial represen colonnades of classical architecture or , , , the supporting tation was that it inevitably imposed a fallacious human members of any modular structure," The next year, Clement order on things, rather than simply delivering fact. "Earlier Greenberg, attacking Minimalism, suggested that the move painting," Judd said to Glaser and Lippard, "was saying that ment had been infiltrated by the "good design" of recent there's more order in the scheme of things than we admit home and office furniture." Although the art-historical now, like Poussin saying order underlies nature." That is, pic mainstream now largely treats Judd's sculpture as intrac torial representation (especially "illusionism") was "linked tably literalist about its own space and materials, several up with" ways of thinking that Judd characterized variously recent essays, too, have found references to the everyday. as "rationalism," "humanism," "anthropomorphism," or "the built environment, "echoes of Plexiglas jukebox windows, philosophy of,a man-centered universe." These views of the car parts, cutlery, and shiny metal turnstiles',"14 world,·repiete with implicit organization, were "pretty much It seems to me that this Janus-faced quality of Judd's discredited now" or "wrong and not-credible."18 sculptures-their being at once literalist and bound up, 11 seems that Judd, trained as a painter, had finally as one writer has put it, in lithe spaces and surfaces of concluded that none of the modernist efforts to perfect rep the modern city"-is a strange quality, one needing resentation couM save it from its fundamental fraudufence, 154 FIG. 4.5 Donald Judd Untitled (DSS 32), 1962 light cadmium red oil on wood and Masonite black enamel on Masonite and wood with asphalt pipe, 1 44 /4 x 40 3/8 X13 3/4 in. (112.4 x 10204 x 34.9 em) Collection of Judd Foundation its inevitable organization, systematization, or abstraction you live here and you are involved in your sense of what's of the world. On the occasion of the Whitney exhibition, around yoU."21 Judd spoke to Lippard about his early frustration with Seeing Judd's work fully requires that we manage to drawing from life. His femarks make dear that his eventual -keep always in view both its literalism and its engagement rejection of optical representation was c;tlso a denial of with the built environment. What might it have meant for idealist notions of the material world: Judd to refuse representation even as he worked with the architectural vocabulary of his city? These two claims made You know, you can't sit and draw something out there as if for Judd's sculpture, both by his critics and by the artist somehow you're putting it down on paper.