OPEN ENCLOSED: Donald Judd by Actar Publishers

OPEN ENCLOSED: Donald Judd

“This book introduces us to the essence of Donald Judd’s thought in the text Specific Objects (1965) and then expands the medium for those objects to a geographic territory. It shows us how there has been a shifting of boundaries in Judd’s work: from the pieces on the wall or the floor in a room to the enormous empty habitat, filled with natural light, which he gained by remodeling pavilions and former military spaces in Marfa, Texas. The analysis provides an understanding of the profound coherence of this unfolding. With this surprising expansion of scale, the artist does not lose any control; and it reveals the power of the unitary and radical attitude at its origin. The use of the desert and opening courses into its colonization occupied a large part of the sculptor’s attention in his later period.”

OPEN ENCLOSED: Donald Judd

Juan Navarro Baldeweg

Gillermo Zuaznabar (Donostia-San Sebastián, 1971), Licenciate in Fine Arts, specializing in painting (UB), post-graduate certificate from Die Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, and PhD in Architectural Design (UPC), Barcelona; Department of Architecture at Rovira i Virgili University (URV), Tarragona. His research focuses on the relationship between art and architecture, and he is the author of: “Lo Spazio nella forma. La scultura di Oteiza i l’estetica basca” (2011); “Piero della Francesca. La pala di Brera”(2008); “Piedra en el paisaje. Jorge Oteiza y Luis Vallet, Memorial al Padre Donosti” (2006); “Oiza-Oteiza: The Altzuza Line of Defence” (with Josep Quetglas and Fernando Marzá, 2004); and “Jorge Oteiza animal fronterizo. Casa-taller Irun 1957-1958” (Actar, 2001).

Gillermo Zuaznabar

he is professor and head of the area of Theory of Art and Architecture for the

Gillermo Zuaznabar

Donald Judd OPEN ENCLOSED

Gillermo Zuaznabar

An Explanatory Note, 12 Years Later The articles compiled in this book are part of the PhD dissertation “S/T, Pabellones de Artillería Donald Judd, Marfa, Texas 1979-1994” directed by Josep Quetglas and which we defended together, at the Barcelona School of Architecture (UPC), on June 26, 2003. Without his help and dedication, neither that dissertation nor this book would have been possible. His authorship and presence should be remembered in presenting the work as a joint endeavor. At different times, collaboration was also received from Eddy Wylie, Roger Miralles, Randy Sánchez, Emiliano López and Diana Rovira, with the involvement of the staff at the Judd Foundation and the Chinati Foundation. Valentín Roma was the one who saw the dissertation and made it into this book. Carlos Martí and Juan Navarro Baldeweg were the ones who, over the course of 10 years, asked repeatedly about “the book”, forcing me to work on it through their persistent “little questions”. Publishing what I wrote between 12 and 17 years ago as a dissertation (1998-2003) also forces me to confront the person I was back then. In order to recognize myself, I felt the need to retouch the text: adding quotation marks, a lot of commas, and erasing affirmations that sounded too much like a young man more interested in self-affirmation than clean analysis. The quotation marks are the result of uncertainty, the commas create a new rhythm, the erasures are because, with age, I feel less need for repetitions and for adjectives. Waiting 12 years was not an intentional choice. There were editors interested in the book, who invested their efforts in it. The book was translated, edited and the layout done twice, in 2008 and 2011, but the publication was halted just days before printing, for reasons that are, even today, still hard to believe. If it hadn’t been so frustrating, it could have been funny. Now I think the delays have been a good thing. The book is stronger, it has nuances that have emerged with time; it is more essential, the years have stripped it of uncomfortable relationships. 12 years ago I would have dedicated this to Pedro, but he left us four years ago; he remains in my memory. Today, I dedicate it to Diana, and to Mateo who came to us six years ago, and to Ana, Beatriz and Contxu, who are always there. 4

8 Foreword Juan Navarro Baldeweg, "An Endless Unfolding" 17 Presentation 25

Specific Objects. Donald Judd

37 About Specific Objects. (Text Comment) 51 Artillery Sheds 70 · B ack to the Artillery Sheds. (Second Visit) 77 · Sol LeWitt's cubes after Judd's 85

La Mansana de Chinati One, two; eye and hand, three, four and five; sun, line and shadow.

Un, dos; ojo y mano, tres, cuatro y cinco; sol, línea y sombra.

96 · Lines and symmetries in La Mansana de Chinati 123 The Dust on Casa Pérez 134 · Ayala de Chinati. Donald Judd

136 Bibliography 136 · Donald Judd An Anthology of Articles on the Landscape 139 · Donald Judd Complete writings

An Endless Unfolding Juan Navarro Baldeweg In the mid nineteen fifties a young painter, Donald Judd, began his artistic career in an atmosphere dominated by the ideas of Clement Greenberg, in which a work’s excellence was based on the original and characteristic purity of each particular expressive medium. In his reflections on painting, he highlighted its specificities: its two-dimensionality – flat painting – and the central manifestations of its making; in other words, he highlighted the singularity of its format and how the essential variables of its execution are revealed. Clement Greenberg’s authority stood out on the New York scene for the brilliance of his proposals and for its obstinate radicality. Greenberg believed that North American painting was the natural heir to the centrality enjoyed by Paris after the Second World War and, in fact, when Donald Judd lived in New York it was already a strong creative focal point for the art world. Prominent figures of the time included De Kooning and Pollock, perhaps the most loyal representatives of the purity that Greenberg upheld, coinciding with the criteria laid out by Harold Rosenberg – the other central theorist in New York then. Greenberg’s conviction concerning his criteria derived from having generated an evolving mental outline for the arts. At the end of this evolution, he presented a model for use in comparing the work that he had observed as a critic, in order to emphasize the pieces that best illustrated this teleologically envisioned history. Donald Judd’s methods and ideas began in this context of historic determinism. His thought owed a lot to Greenberg and carried certain prejudices that he would soon undertake to qualify and correct. Other artists, those who fit into the Pop Art movement, left those principles to one side, taking no interest in them at all. In any case, Donald Judd’s focus and his early work as a painter and then as a critic in the nineteen sixties was influenced by Greenberg’s hazy theories. Many of Judd’s ideas are laid out in his well-known text Specific Objects, published in 1965, which

Juan Navarro Baldeweg "An Endless Unfolding"

Guillermo Zuaznabar rightly believes to play a fundamental role in understanding the development of his work. In that text, his vision is defined indirectly through observations centered on the work of some of his closest contemporaries. He examines paintings by Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Reinhardt, Noland and sculptures by Oldenberg and Chamberlain, among others. Specific Objects is an aesthetic treatise, a series of near-philosophical commentaries, referring to the physical constitution of certain paintings and sculptures. His observations are directed toward the communicative possibilities deduced from their corporeal nature. Donald Judd centers mainly on the physical singularity of the work as a signifier, rather than as a conventional vehicle for conveying meaning in a virtual sphere. In other words, he focuses on the meaning of the signifier. Specific Objects implicity contains an assortment of problems, solutions and instructions to which Donal Judd would remain loyal throughout his career. His artistic territory soon moved away from painting toward something situated, first, between painting and sculpture and later toward sculpture with a heavy chromatic element. The initial pieces hang on the wall or sit on the floor; they are like furniture made from different materials, in their natural colors or painted, which appear before us, scattered throughout the space (fig.1). They are elemental pieces, generally made up of parts, but he very deliberately avoids a visual

1 National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa. 24 May-6 July 1975.

Juan Navarro Baldeweg "An Endless Unfolding"

1 National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa. 24 May-6 July 1975.

as an exhibition reviewer for Art News, Arts International, and Art in America. Although he continued writing critical texts after 1965, Judd himself identifies this year as the moment where he abandons this activity professionally. His leaving of this paid position as a critic coincides with his irruption into the art market. A few years later, he asserted that his reason to publish reviews had primarily been economic and that, once admitted into the art market, he no longer needed the money from the magazines1. We find Judd, then, in a moment of intense artistic and critical labor: thirteen written pieces published in one 1 «I wrote criticism as year. The object that introduces Donald Judd must be a mercenary and would located among the thirteen critical texts and the thirnever have written it otherwise. Since there ty-three works produced in the 1964-652 season. With were no set hours and since the goal of finding that useful object for the presentaI could work at home it tion, one can already demarcate with much precision was a good part-time job.» Donald Judd, Complete the foundational period. Adding up texts and works of Writings 1959-1975, The art, there are forty-six objects that can be potentially Press of The Nova Scotia useful to present this “stranger”. If we take a work of College of Art and Design; art, it might be difficult to get some clues. Judd’s works Co-published by New York University Press, 2007, p.VII are known for their apparent “silence”. The initial ap2 These thirty-three proach is not easy. Perhaps, dialoguing with one of works are catalogued Judd’s objects, the approach must be from the side, cirwith numbers that go cling it, in an oblique fashion, without asking direct from 45 to 77 in the years 1964-1965.Donald Judd/ questions. When one interrogates someone that, at the Catalogue Raisonné of beginning, does not “speak”, it is more useful to make Paintings, Objects and the person speak of issues indirectly related to himself. Wood Blocks (19601974), Ottawa: National For the object to tell us about him, it would be incorrect Gallery of Canada, 1975. to directly ask the artifact who he is, because in this way, the process would become a defensive one and, thus, a mute one. One will not get an answer. In the meanwhile, for the stranger to introduce himself, we conceal our curiosity. In order to learn about him, we must tackle it about surrounding issues. Without being indiscreet, we must investigate about those elements that make up his world. Asking in this way, the stranger

will speak through a third party about who he is. Ensconced within the body of others, he will speak of himself, of his tastes, and preferences. For this reason, to begin this analysis we could disregard Judd’s very artworks given that they have a very close and personal relationship with the one questioned. So, for the time being, saving them for later, we must ask Judd about his friends: what they do, where they live, where they work, how they work. By doing this and without violating the initial silence of his works, we will get Judd to present himself. In this way, we understand that the most advisable thing will be to forget the thirty-three works of art and focus on the thirteen critical writings. His written works will indeed speak of his preferences, tastes, filial relationships, and phobias. The thirteen texts, however, are too many for the introduction. The task now is to find the most complete and complex text. The one which speaks the most. Which is the most thought out, worked, and —explicitly— describes the milieu within which Donald Judd moved. Such a text exists. It stands out from the thirteen texts by its ambitiousness, its reach, and because it was commissioned to Judd for those very reasons. In 1964, the Arts Magazine's editor asked him to write an analytical piece about the new art being created in New York for a yearly issue of Arts Yearbook magazine. Judd wrote the

Presentation

About “Specific Objects” (Comment on the text) Donald Judd asserts that he has not written a manifesto establishing a new art form. What he has developed, as his assignment, is a critical text. The assignment called for an analysis of the most recent art being produced in the United States3. The text’s interest may be found, in this way, in its documentary value – more or less objective and more or less critical – but all in all, it exposes the forms that art was presenting in the north American British markets. It is a text that proposes to define the art forms being developed in the United States and at that time. The text, any text however, also speaks about the author who penned it. The editor uncovers that hidden relation by including a photograph of Judd’s work among its illustrations. Although Judd has distanced his text from his work in subsequent editions by means of a note that points to the editor as responsible for that addition, it is clear that in the text he is also speaking about himself4: not only about what he is interested in and what he likes as addressed in the text but also by the very forms and by his very use of language. Critical texts tend to use a more narrative and rhetorical language that is characteristic of “historicist discussions”. They evaluate the works from the outside and judge them from a position of authority. The critic appropriates a singular privilege: that of evaluating the work as an assessor. The following fragment from Clement Greenberg’s “Recentness of Sculpture,” published in 1967, is a good example that

3 “Lars Morell: In 196465 you wrote an article entitled “Specific Objects.” Is it your manifesto? Donald Judd: No, that was a review of the situation in New York. A magazine wanted me to write it, and that was why it was written. It was meant to be simply a descriptive review, and therefore clearly not a manifesto. Writing manifestos would have been rather strange for me at that moment.” Lars Morell,“Donald Judd. Great Art Through Simple Means,” Skala; Nordic Magazine of Architecture and Art, no. 29, Copenhague, 1993, p. 42. 4 In Donald Judd Complete Writings 19591975, New York: The New York University Press / Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1975, p. 189; an endnote appears through which Judd explains in the following way the inclusion of one of his works among the illustrations: “The editor, not I, has included a photograph of my work.”

Artillery Sheds

Chinati Mountains, Texas.

In 1971 Judd moved to Marfa and bought his house. He began to construct permanent installations on his property there. The production and maintenance of the works turned out to be considerably costly. His interest in maintaining the installations permanently was developed thanks to the collaboration of the Dia Art Foundation. Dia is an institution that financed artists in the production and installation of art. In the 1960s and 1970s, certain artists such as Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria, Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, or Gordon MattaClark began to produce a series of works intended for places that, up until that point, were located outside of artistic circles. In this sense, Dia was created to finance those projects that could not obtain funding through the art market. The members of this foundation were not foreign to the art world. The president and primary financial backer of this project was Phillipa de Menil, daughter and heir of Dominique and John Menil of Houston, principal shareholders of Schlumberger Oil. Her interest in art had been inculcated at home. Her family owned one of the most important art collections in the world. One of their most famous pieces is the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Heiner Friedrich, Phillipa Menil’s husband, was the foundation’s vice president. A native of Berlin, he came from a wealthy family whose economic situation derived from his father’s engineering firm founded after World War II. Friedrich, set up an art gallery in Munich before finishing school, along with a partner, Franz Dahlem. He made a name for himself by selling American art to German collectors in the sixties and seventies. In 1973 he opened his own gallery in New York’s SoHo, establishing himself as an important dealer of American art.

Artillery Sheds

Chinati Mountains, Texas.

After about fifty meters, there is a door with a plaque commemorating the day Fort D.A. Russell was founded. The first mention of the fort in Marfa dates back to the year 1911 when soldiers camped to the southwest of the railroad tracks. Although the plain was not apt for the cavalry, the railroad station turned out to be an important distribution point, turning Marfa into a prime center for the trading of wool, mohair, and livestock. In 1914, Camp Marfa was the main military headquarters for the Big Bend region. The camp supplied soldiers, horses, and provisions to fourteen other advanced outposts of the American army along the Mexican border. Because of the Mexican Revolution, there was an increased military presence. Different groups of outlaws took advantage of the disturbances in Mexico to loot haciendas on the frontier. As a result, the cavalry and air force pilots began to patrol the areas of a border that had not yet been defined nor accepted by the corresponding governments. In 1914, Pancho Villa entered Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and two thousand Mexicans, both civilians and federal troops, crossed the border and turned themselves over to the American authorities as a way to avoid being executed by the revolutionaries in their country. The fugitives were held in Marfa before being taken to El Paso, where their situation was dealt with. In 1918, at the end of World War I, and in an attempt to normalize the limits of both countries, the Rio Grande was decreed an impassable line, and countries on either side agreed not to cross that border. Shortly after that they began to build the fort. It had previously consisted of tents. First a house was built near the west gate and on a high ground (Officerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hill-Cerro de los Oficiales) for the commanding officer. A hospital with 96 beds, a veterinary surgery room, a radio station, and a theater were also built. In 1920 U-shaped barracks were built for the soldiers along a line known as Cavalry Row. Three barracks created an habitational unit, equipped with a kitchen, din-

Artillery Sheds

Pancho Villa at the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

Pancho Villa inspects the troops at the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

Mexican refugees marching to Marfa after the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

Artillery Sheds

Pancho Villa at the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

Pancho Villa inspects the troops at the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

Mexican refugees marching to Marfa after the Battle of Ojinaga, January 1st-4th, 1914.

The side walls are completely filled by windows with central cross-shaped joinery, just like those in the first room. They are each lined up with the window they face. Each rectangle of the floor duplicates in width the rectangles of the first room. The light width of a quadrant of the window, 1.70 m, is similar to the length of a rectangle on the floor. The longitudinal division of the window and the separation between each one of the windows are thus marked by a transverse dividing line on the floor. In each bay there are sixteen boxes aligned along an imaginary longitudinal axis that would run through the center of the bays. The distance between the aligned boxes is marked by the second quadrant of each window. In this way, the spaces

Artillery Shed north. View from north to south.

Artillery Shed north. View from south to north. Artillery Shed south.

between the rows and the lines are regularized in a formation of 3 x 16. Between lines four and five there is a jump caused by two transverse partitions that close off the lateral bays, leaving the central bay open. There are a total of eighteen pairs of windows. Two pairs, the sixth and the eighteenth (the final one), are empty of any box. The view of the 48 boxes is very similar from the front and back ends of the building. The southern facade has four windows. The door in the middle has two identical windows of the same height on either side of it.

Artillery Shed south. View from north to south.

Behind this faรงade, turning slightly eastward, is the second shed. We now find ourselves between two identical faรงades separated by fifty meters. They have the same number and distribution of elements, the same measurements, the

Artillery Sheds

Artillery Shed, detail.

Artillery Shed north. View from north to south.

Artillery Shed north. View from south to north. Artillery Shed south.

Artillery Shed south. View from north to south.

Artillery Sheds

Artillery Shed, detail.

Donald Judd Artillery Shed north. The Chinati Foundation Marfa, Texas.

Artillery Sheds

Donald Judd Artillery Shed north. The Chinati Foundation Marfa, Texas.

Artillery Sheds

The Dust on Casa Pérez Donald Judd, Sierra Parda, Presidio County, TX, 1986

Bihotz, buztinezko Bihotz, Etxe ttiki bat zara,  Ahula, hauskorra, lau gelatako; Lau, lau gelatan Bihotz, Zenbat mamu dauzkazun, Nola ikaratzen zaren, gauean; (...) Bernardo Atxaga

You, that are like a house Made of clay:  Small, fragile,  With four rooms; You, that fills yourself with ghosts, and that gets scared,  and that cries when night falls; (...)

“Dust preserves!” the architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza would claim when someone dared to touch one of his delicate mock-ups. Dust preserves the memory of immobile objects. Its accumulation declares that it has been forgotten, become uninhabited, faded from public interest. A layer of dust indicates and registers any violation to its silent permanence. Dust is a film that gives away, if breached, the unfortunate manhandling by “conservators,” by unwanted friends. Dust preserves, and its mere presence generates curiosity, interest. When you approach a dusty object, it warns you: “I haven’t moved, no one has touched me; take care not to break me.” Its neglect, the lack of interest in the object, is really what saves it from being broken. Otherwise, when interest in it is sparked, when public attention centers on it, the disputes begin. And around the object spring up owners, proprietors, watchmen, heirs, insurance companies, businesses, foundations, publicity campaigns, profitability studies, and its political, social and economic exploitation by administrations. Interest is born, not in understanding the object, but in determining how it can best be used to generate money. Here the art officials’ only interest: social projection and economic viability. There is dust in Marfa. A lovely ochre-golden dust that preserves the memory of a territory, the West Texas, drenched in the legends of the American frontier. This dust of the Chihuahuan Desert tinged the steel of the weapons, helmets, belts and saddles of the Spaniard explorers, as well as the cassocks of the Jesuits and Franciscans that accompanied them. The faces and hands of the locals, and the Protestant colonists from the north, are

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The Dust on Casa Pérez Donald Judd, Sierra Parda, Presidio County, TX, 1986

Bihotz, buztinezko Bihotz, Etxe ttiki bat zara,  Ahula, hauskorra, lau gelatako; Lau, lau gelatan Bihotz, Zenbat mamu dauzkazun, Nola ikaratzen zaren, gauean; (...) Bernardo Atxaga

You, that are like a house Made of clay:  Small, fragile,  With four rooms; You, that fills yourself with ghosts, and that gets scared,  and that cries when night falls; (...)

123

The acquisition and installation of works of art in these architectures is tied to a slow but continual process of isolation and distancing by the artist that culminated with his burial, on February 20, 1994, three long hours from Marfa along difficult trails that border and cross gorges in the Chinati mountain range where the Las Casas Ranch is located. Asking about the real reasons why Donald Judd decided to come to Marfa would violate his peace. For the time being, following in his footsteps, without raising too much dust, and studying one of his works can be revealing enough. Collina Sapienza and Casa Pérez.

Casa Pérez Half way between Las Casas Ranch and Marfa lies Casa Pérez, a small adobe house that stores, beneath its coat of dust, the memory, the gaze, and the gestures of the man who once owned it and claimed that the entire world belonged to him if that piece of land belonged to him. His friend Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, recalls asking him about that very piece of land: “How do you feel here, Don?” After a pause, beneath the sun, with the sound of the cicadas and the irregular purr of the well’s metal windmill, Judd smirked and answered in a whisper, “Here, I am the law.” What is his law? What are Donald Judd’s laws in this place? The modern artist creates, develops, and applies laws to conform to his or her own reality. The modern artist does not accept the reality that legal power offers. The legislative body approves laws in order to control the world of values that it protects. On the other hand, the modern artist generates other laws to construct other realities, other spaces, other values. Judd’s values are the materials he uses: Light, Color and Matter. They constitute his legislative power. The works he designed since 1965 defy legal

126

The Dust on Casa Pérez

Casa Pérez, Texas.

Collina Sapienza, Casa Pérez and pergolas, Texas.

127

126

The Dust on Casa Pérez

Casa Pérez, Texas.

Collina Sapienza, Casa Pérez and pergolas, Texas.

127

Published by Actar Publishers New York, 2014 Author Gillermo Zuaznabar Editor Ricardo Devesa Graphic Design and Production Núria Saban Printed at Grafos S.A.

ISBN 978-1-940291-21-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934291

Photo credits: Duncan Photo (p. 58); Rutger Fuchs (p. 113); John Ford (p. 111); George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress (p. 57); Sol LeWitt (p. 78); Emiliano López y Roger Miralles (pp. 66-68, 84, 118,130,131); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (p. 47); Google earth, (p. 55); Richard V. Francaviglia (p. 120); Diana Rovira (p. 112, 117); Gillermo Zuaznabar (pp. 50, 53, 55, 61, 62, 63, 64, 71, 74, 82, 99, 101, 103, 107,108, 127,129, 132, 134, 135).

Distribution Actar D Inc. New York www.actar-d.com 151 Grand Street, 5th floor New York, NY, USA T +1 212 966 2207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com

Also available in spanish Donald Judd. En el paisaje ISBN 978-1-940291-27-7 All rights reserved © of the edition, Actar Publishers, New York, 2014. © of the text, Gillermo Zuaznabar © of the images, their authors © of the translations, their authors No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the publishers, except in the context of reviews.

OPEN ENCLOSED: Donald Judd

Juan Navarro Baldeweg

Gillermo Zuaznabar

he is professor and head of the area of Theory of Art and Architecture for the

Gillermo Zuaznabar