| posts tagged ‘Donald Judd’ |
TWITTER FEEDRECENT COMMENTS
TOP 150 TAGS
ARCHIVES
|
|||
Recent Brooklyn Rail Articlesposted August 1st, 2010
Installation view of James Hyde, Stuart Davis Group David Reed In Conversation with Phong Bui, by Phong Bui Donald Judd and 101 Spring Street at Nicholas Robinson Gallery, by Phong Bui Very Good: A Memorial Exhibition Celebrating the Work and Ideas of New Zealand Artist Julian Dashper, Attic Contemporary Art Space, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australiaposted July 9th, 2010
Julian Dashper Opens July 9, 2010 Work by Julian Dashper, Victoria Munro, Kyle Jenkins and replica furtniture of Donald Judd Location: The Minimalist Medici: Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, 1923-2010, by Ruth Ann Fredenthal, ArtCritical.com, June 18, 2010posted June 27th, 2010
Installation view of Salotto – Villa Panza Museum, Varese, Italy Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, 1923-2010 “Most people who have any interest in Post-War American art, whether Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Environmental Art, Conceptualism or Monochromism have heard of the great Italian art collector, Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. In many ways a modern day Medici, Count Panza passed away at age 87 in Milan on April 24, 2010. Together with his wife, Giovanna, and with enormous love, courage, forsight and brilliance, the Panzas amassed three distinct collections totaling 2500 works from the mid -1950′s to the present, mostly of American art. They mostly liked to acquire in depth from mature artists who were as yet not well known but would later be recognized as the major artists of their era. These included such figures as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Irwin, Brice Marden, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Cy Twombly, Richard Long, Lawrence Weiner, James Turrell, Roni Horn, Martin Puryear, Lawrence Carroll and many many others. The Panzas were, in fact, the first major collectors of these artists and signaled to others that these artists were important. Their vast acquisitions influenced American and world art history and art markets profoundly, as well as enhancing the collections of several American museums such as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Hirshorn…” Studio Show 2010, David Reed Studio, New York, NYposted June 17th, 2010
3 Concurrent Exhibitions Katy Siegel and I had hoped to include Gerald Jackson’s work in an exhibition for which I was the advisor and Katy the curator, “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975”. But we could not find a way to get in touch with Gerald. Then, when I was visiting the exhibition at the National Academy Museum, Gerald was there. Shortly after, he sent me a DVD of a recent performance that just astounded me. In the third Studio Show Gerald will present this DVD with the painting included in the performance, and earlier work on skids from the ‘80s. “I think that my experience growing up in America was a really black and white experience. The only color I think I really saw, that I thought was color, was on TV, commercials, or a different view of America – that America was in color and my world was in black and white.” -– Gerald Jackson In the lunchroom there will be an exhibition, curated by Peter Soriano, of drawings by Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Lee Lozano and Richard Serra. The exhibition asks questions about the nature of “working drawings”. Rey Akdogan has curated a related exhibition in the office, mostly of sculptures from the ’70s, including works by Nancy Arlen, Lillian Ball, Bill Bollinger, Lee Lozano, Judy Pfaff, and Alan Shields. The Studio Show will also be open to the public on Sunday, June 13th, and Saturday, June 19th, from 1 to 6 PM, and at other times by appointment. Please contact the studio if you have any questions. We hope you can come to the opening and please feel free to forward this invitation to your friends! We will serve beer and wine. -– David Reed, Gerald Jackson, Peter Soriano, Rey Akdogan, Hans Kuzmich, Mark Golamco, and Andrew Schwartz reedstudio Donald Judd’s Library Now Onlineposted May 11th, 2010
Donald Judd’s personal library of 13,004 books located in La Mansana de Chinati, his home and studio in Marfa, Texas is now accessible online. The library database is the result of an ambitious process, which took more than 3,500 hours of work and led to the cataloguing and photography of the collection from October 2008 through January 2010. A library offers a portrait of its collector, in this case Donald Judd. The idiosyncrasies of the collection — its subject matter and arrangement—offer insight into the private realm of the reader, the range of Judd’s interests over time and the combination of philosophies, sciences and cultural influences he referenced. Spanning over 40 years of active collecting, the library shows a breadth of knowledge that is remarkably diverse and eclectic. Visitors to the website will be able to view not only the floor plan, bookcases, shelves, and books, but also each title’s reference, including its Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH), and information about where to find it at a location near the users’ home. This achievement provides new access to the artist’s personal holdings and a powerful tool for researchers and the general public to deepen their understanding of his contributions to the art of the 20th Century. The online portal presents the books precisely as they are in the library. Utilizing a program and browser designed specifically for this project, visitors to the site will begin the virtual tour by viewing a floor plan of the artist’s two-room Marfa library, with the ability to browse its 96 bookcases, which include books on subjects as varied as 20th Century Art, Norse Sagas, and Physics. Moreover, visitors can also view the spines of each book exactly as they sit on the shelves and can select any book to view its particulars, including basic information such as the title, author, and issue date, as well as details like the binding, physical description, and Dewey Classification. Although the Judd Library is not a lending institution, the website does allow visitors to locate any book on the shelf at a lending library near their current geographic location. And finally, visitors will have the ability to explore the books included in the Judd library using a more standard search function including criteria such as the title, author, publisher, subject headings, language, and the ISBN. The organization of the library reflects Judd’s sensitivity to geography and understanding of the development of the arts, languages, and sciences across different ages and cultures. As evidenced by the sheer breadth of the collection, Judd valued books both for their ability to share knowledge and as beautiful objects to be treated with respect. The library covers 576 shelves containing 13,004 books, of which 10,718 are unique pieces and 2,286 are duplicates. The topics are wide-ranging, with 1,060 pertaining to exhibitions, 3,129 art books (including 100 catalogues), and 1,455 focusing on architecture. At least 40 languages are represented throughout the collection. The library is located in La Mansana de Chinati, also known as “The Block”, Judd’s former studio and residence in Marfa, and the site of some of his first large-scale architectural projects and installations. It measures one full city block and incorporates a historic World War I military workshop. The artist first used The Block in 1973 when he rented one of the two former army buildings and began installing the property with his art. One year later, he bought the entire property, which also includes a rectangular two-story home, formerly the offices of the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps. The Block is enclosed with adobe walls, which reference local construction techniques, as does the interior courtyard, which is landscaped with cactus gardens and Judd furniture. Also on the property, and in addition to the library, are a unique site-specific U-shaped work, a Judd-designed swimming pool and private garden as well as two large, permanently installed spaces that house the artist’s studio. Pictures about Pictures: Discourses in Painting from Albers to Zobernig, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austriaposted March 14th, 2010
Poul Gernes, Zielscheibenbild / Target B, 1966-68 Opening: March 25, 2010 Curated by Renate Wiehager, “Pictures about Pictures. Discourses in Painting” – is the Daimler Art Collection’s exhibition title for the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna. About 130 works ranging from Classical Modernism and the post-war avant-garde via European Zero and Minimalism to international contemporary art are being presented. The exhibition is structured into thematic fields, each of which presents discursive references to historical and current positions: Bauhaus and De Stijl, Hard Edge and New Color School USA, Constructive and Concrete Tendencies, European Zero avant-garde, Minimalism and design aspects, Neo Geo and contemporary positions. The show brings together about 75 artists from roughly twenty countries, and the works cover a time span of one hundred years, from 1908 (Adolf Hölzel) to 2010 (Andreas Schmid). As already suggested by the exhibition title – “Pictures about Pictures. Discourses in Painting” – this show is not showcasing a museum-style sequence of styles and isms. The presentation is in fact attempting to create a referential dialogue between the works and to reveal discursive links between individual formal ideas and subject matter. The intention here is to consider art history not in the sense of ‘invention’ and ‘progression’, but as an argumentative union of pictures in temporary contexts and transitional forms. Dialogue situations of this kind come about in the first place within the horizon of epochs transcribed by time and rendered visible by the exhibition – European avant-garde movements before 1939; re-adoption and reformulation of abstract tendencies in Western art after 1945; analytical deconstructions, remakes and media cross-dressing in the direction of architecture, design and Ambient Art in Contemporary Art. But discursive references can also be discerned over and above the passage of time or developments that diverge culturally and ideologically – Simone Westerwinter and Anselm Reyle make an ironic allusions to the European Zero avant-garde; Jonathan Monk translates Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” into an endless loop; Andreas Reiter Raabe and Olivier Mosset analyse the “end of painting” topos with pictorial forms of emptiness and nothingness; Eva Berendes reconfigures the material aesthetics and formal inventory of Russian Constructivism; Jens Wolf develops rhythmic-serial cover versions of Josef Albers’s “Homage” paintings; Markus Ebner and Tom Sachs ‘repeat’ pictures by their teachers Günter Fruhtrunk and Peter Halley. Participating Artists: Donald Judd: Delegated Fabrication, Conference & Exhibition, Portland, ORposted March 5th, 2010
Donald Judd: Delegated Fabrication Sunday, April 25, 2010 From the outside a Donald Judd piece is seamless, hiding all traces of it’s construction. But behind the final piece is a rich history of the artist’s intent and his method for fabrication. Join us for a groundbreaking discussion of Judd’s art, lead by contemporary art scholars and Judd’s longtime fabricator, Peter Ballantine. The day-long conference in Portland, Ore., will look at Judd as an icon of the American minimalist movement, as well as issues of authenticity and fabrication that continue to have lasting implications for artists today. A related exhibition will be presented in the University of Oregon in Portland’s White Box visual laboratory. Conference Speakers: Curators: Registration (includes boxed lunch): To register, visit www.juddconference.com The event is sponsored by the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts Judd Foundation Announces Catalogue Raisonne Committeeposted December 11th, 2009
A Letter from the Judd Foundation: November 30, 2009 Dear Friends, I am very pleased to announce the start of the Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné through the appointment of the Catalogue Raisonné Committee and a Catalogue Raisonné Manager, Katy Rogers. Ms. Rogers, who is currently completing the Robert Motherwell Catalogue Raisonné, will manage the project with the advisement of the committee. The production of a Catalogue Raisonné is a natural extension of our mission to promote a wider understanding of Judd’s artistic legacy by developing scholarly and educational programs. The project is already supported by a newly designed Catalogue Raisonné database, which Judd Foundation has developed over two years, specifically to document artworks by Donald Judd (1928-1994). The Committee is comprised of Catalogue Raisonné scholars, curators with experience with Judd works, and former studio assistants to Donald Judd, thus establishing continuity with the 1975 Judd Catalogue Raisonné. Founding members include William C. Agee, Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, James Bruce Dearing, Dudley Del Balso and Flavin Judd. Ms. Rogers will begin work on the project in April 2010 and will manage a team of scholars and researchers from the US and abroad, as well as others who worked closely with the artist over many years. Judd Foundation has allocated seed funding to support the first phase of The Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné, a project that is expected to take a number of years. This new Catalogue Raisonné is the first since 1975 and builds upon the Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects and Wood-Blocks 1960-1974, co-edited by committee member Dudley Del Balso, Brydon Smith, and Roberta Smith, as part of an exhibition catalogue published by the National Gallery, Ottawa, in 1975. A comprehensive volume of Judd prints, 1951 – 1994, Donald Judd, Prints and Works in Editions: A Catalogue Raisonné, was published in 1993, edited by Jörg Schellmann and Mariette Josephus Jitta (Editions Schellmann and Schirmer/Mosel, 1993; 1996). The Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné will cover works by Donald Judd in multiple volumes and digital formats. Through this project, Judd Foundation will produce an updated and comprehensive record of the artist’s oeuvre and will expand the body of critical writing on the artist available for scholarly research. I am sure that you will share our enthusiasm as we begin our work on this great endeavor. It will be a rewarding one, and we all look forward to celebrating with you the publication of the volumes in due course. With best wishes, Barbara Hunt McLanahan About the Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné Committee Manager: Katy Rogers is currently project manager and co-author of the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Collages by Robert Motherwell. The volume is the culmination of a seven-year project overseen by the Dedalus Foundation, and will be published by Yale University Press. Rogers has written on Motherwell and other artists, and most recently contributed to the exhibition catalogue Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis at El Museo del Barrio, New York (October 2009 – February 2010). She received her Master’s degree in art history from Hunter College of the City University of New York, and is an alumna of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. About the Donald Judd Catalogue Raisonné Committee Members: William C. Agee is an internationally renowned art critic and historian. He is currently the Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of Art History at Hunter College, New York. Mr. Agee has published and lectured extensively in the field of modern American art. He was the Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from 1974 through 1982, and before that was an associate curator at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. He has written a number of essays on Donald Judd and organized several exhibitions of the artist’s work including Judd’s first major museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1968. Heidi Colsman-Freyberger holds a doctorate degree from Philipps-Universität, Marburg, Germany. She has worked at the Museum of Modern Art, in commercial galleries, as Robert Motherwell’s secretary-cum-curator, and as a freelancer for Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her Catalogue Raisonné projects include editing Egon Schiele (Harry N. Abrams, 1990) and compiling Barnett Newman (Yale University Press, 2004); she is currently chief researcher for another Catalogue Raisonné project, the paintings and sculpture of Jasper Johns. James Bruce Dearing is a painter and an independent art consultant living in New York. From 1968 through 1983, Mr. Dearing was a studio assistant for Donald Judd. Over a number of years he developed a deep understanding of Judd’s working practices, and travelled with Judd on research trips and to install exhibitions around the world. He also worked at The Whitney Museum of American Art and was a partner at Bark Frameworks LLC in New York until 2005. Dudley Del Balso serves on the Board of Judd Foundation. Ms. Del Balso worked with Judd almost continuously between 1968 and 1984 managing his office and overseeing the fabrication of his work. She co-authored the 1975 Judd Catalogue Raisonné published by the National Gallery of Canada. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the International Print Center New York and on the New York Board of the Trust for Public Land. Flavin Judd, son of Donald Judd, is one of the founding board members of Judd Foundation and is currently the Vice-President of the board. Mr. Judd oversaw the temporary exhibition of selected Judd works at Christie’s New York in 2006, for which Judd Foundation received an award from the International Art Critics Association (AICA). Mr. Judd regularly writes and lectures on his father’s work. Donald Judd: Furniture, Sebastian + Barquet, New York, NYposted October 30th, 2009
November 12 – December 25, 2009 Portrait of the artist as a biker, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, Franceposted October 9th, 2009
Steven Parrino, Untitled, 1993 October 11, 2009 – January 3, 2010 The MAGASIN is starting its season with a portrait of the artist Olivier Mosset. The exhibition takes the form of a tribute, gathering works by different artists, but never showing Olivier Mossetʼs own work. The artists are of all generations, from Carl André to Stéphane Kropf including the famous group of artists 1m3 among the youngest. As a key figure of the artistic scene and part of a family with the same artistic sensitivity, Olivier Mosset keeps close links with them. He collects or swaps works with them. He has today gathered an important collection, most of which was offered to the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds. Other works are to be found at the MAMCO in Geneva, the Consortium in Dijon and in Tucson. The exhibition aims at drawing a portrait of the artist through a series of rooms organized around different specific subjects. A first room will introduce his roots, with Chardinʼs engravings (given each year by his grandfather to his colleagues), or Gregoire Müllerʼs portrait. Another one will highlight portraits of Olivier Mosset with Steven Parrinoʼs photographs of him and acrylic paintings by Walter Steding. Another room will reveal quotations, borrowings and copies (from Hugo Pernet in particular). The following rooms will show monochrome paintings, floor-based works, and the indestructible link between Olivier Mosset and the bikers world. Participating Artists: Meaning Liam Gillick, Edited by Monika Szewczyk, The MIT Press, June 2009posted May 29th, 2009
Click to purchase on Amazon The first critical reader on the artist’s work. With essays by Peio Aguirre, Johanna Burton, Nikolaus Hirsch, John Kelsey, Maurizio Lazzarato, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Benoît Maire, Chantal Mouffe, Barbara Steiner and Marcus Verhagen. Liam Gillick (b. 1964) is a New York and London-based artist who emerged in the 1990s in the midst of paradigmatic political and cultural change. In the past two decades, he has developed a highly influential artistic practice around a discursive model that complicates object production and raises key social questions. This reader brings together diverse theorists, critics, historians, curators and artists to address Gillick’s work and its contexts. Questions of discourse dominate the first four contributions to the book. Peio Aguirre develops his thinking around the “poetics of social forms,” drawing dialectical relations between Gillick’s screen structures, designs, collaborations and the social imaginary of his writings, treating the artist’s praxis as a “whole,” albeit a necessarily elusive one. Sven Lütticken also attends to elusiveness – Gillick’s as well as artist-writers’ such as Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Marcel Broodthaers and Donald Judd – but stresses two conflicting impulses at play in (not) making sense: a critical strategy and an economic imperative. Marcus Verhagen focuses on Gillick’s collection of critical writing, Proxemics: Selected Writings (1988-2006), and develops key distinctions: between Gillick’s discourse and that of Nicolas Bourriaud; and between these two sometime collaborators and the art historian and critic Claire Bishop, who took up Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s notion of “antagonism” to critique Bourriaud’s notion of “relational aesthetics” alongside the art of Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija. John Kelsey combines Foucault’s use of the Ancient Greek term parrhesia — a public speaking of truth, even in the face of death — with Deleuze’s notion of “indirect discourse,” to question the political underpinnings and truth claims in Gillick’s “Volvo” fiction. At their core of the next three essays lie the political and ideological problems of defining difference — which Gillick repeatedly nominates as a key concern – and of practicing differentiation. Barbara Steiner distinguishes corruption, corruptibility, and complicity with market forces and institutional powers. Chantal Mouffe reviews her notion of radical democracy and antagonism drawing nuanced connections and distinctions between Gillick’s praxis and the theories she has developed (also with Ernesto Laclau). Johanna Burton’s essay notes a lack of specificity with regard to Gillick’s deployment of the term “difference” and goes on to develop an instance of feminist difference rooted in enthusiasm. Maria Lind considers kitchens. She takes up this ubiquitous feature of every modern home as a historical nexus, both of the post-World War II ideological battles over planning and speculation, and of several gender-coded modes of production. Further questioning the grounds of practice, Nikolaus Hirsch, considers the changing status of the architectural model as a thought-paradigm and as a thing for forging politics. The last two essays tarry with the operative abstractions of temporality and historical consciousness. Maurizio Lazzarato, whose theorization of immaterial labor has been especially influential for Gillick, contributes notes on the current economic crisis. He focuses on how the logic of debt within neoliberal capitalism, where tomorrow’s earnings are consumed in today’s purchases, becomes a tool to block possibilities of thinking alternative futures. Benoît Maire’s links the free floating time found in Gillick’s fictional writings to developments in continental philosophy, using a complex notion of the screen as a device for mediating social relations in a post-historical time. Meaning Liam Gillick is published by the partners organizing the ongoing survey exhibition: Liam Gillick: Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario. Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 19.01.08 – 24.03.08 Kjell Varvin: Welded Iron & Other Drawings, Galleri Erik Steen, Oslo, Norwayposted April 2nd, 2009
Installation view March 19 – May 3, 2009 Kjell Varvin (born 1939) creates both drawings and paintings, but is best known for his sculptures and installations. This exhibition focuses on a large selection of sculptures made of welded steel and produced over the last fifteen years. Together with the sculptures, a number of drawings on veneer will be on show and the exhibition thereby comprises the largest presentation of Varvin’s work so far. Kjell Varvin’s oeuvre has its roots in Minimalism and the artist himself emphasises how much artists such as Donald Judd, Brice Marden and Sol LeWitt have influenced him (Varvin also later worked as Lewitt’s assistant). However, Varvin uses a method that has more in common with improvisation and playfulness than with stringent planning and perfection. He allows random chance, spontaneous ideas and accidents to be a part of his works, which he prefers to call “proposals” rather than “statements”. This process results in drawings and sculptures that have retained elements of imperfection and therefore also their human quality. At first sight, the sculptures may resemble classical, modernist works, but since their titles and other components refer to observations of everyday objects (as, for example, fire escapes in New York, a pinball machine or a dining table), they appear on closer examination as up-to-date works with a referential diversity that reminds us first and foremost of far younger, postmodernist artists. The exhibition has a fresh and topical quality, though consisting of works by an artist who made his debut in 1964. Throughout his career, Kjell Varvin has exhibited extensively both in Norway and abroad. In recent years, he has participated at major exhibitions such as the Sculpture Biennial at the Vigeland Museum and the Drawing Biennial at the Artists’ House in Oslo and also at joint exhibitions such as “Geometry as Image” at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York and “Go back to Start” and 0047 (all held in 2008). Varvin’s last solo exhibition in Oslo was held at The Drawing Center of Norway in 2007. Project Space: Donald Judd Colored Plexiglas, L & M Arts, New York, NYposted April 2nd, 2009
Installation view March 5 – April 18, 2009 Curated by Peter Ballantine When Donald Judd very reluctantly abandoned painting in 1961-62 in favor of working in three dimensions, it was because he had finally concluded that a philosophically tenable painting was not possible – philosophically in the empirical-perceptual sense of being entirely available visually, and tenable in the sense of being free of abstraction or any other kind of representation. He called these ‘illusionism’ because they are all, in the strictest sense, contrary-to-fact, and therefore anti-visual. Judd later objected on serious grounds to the term ’sculpture’ for his work, but from 1962 until early 1964 (when he started having his work fabricated) this term was not entirely inappropriate, even on his own terms, in that these works, still noticeably handmade and hand-painted, remained, even though unintentionally, slightly expressive. As a former painter, Judd understood color and how it could be used — and, incidentally, considered all materials to be colored — but there was a lingering depictive, cosmetic, and surface-obscuring quality to applied paint. In a 1963 floorpiece, Untitled (DSS 38), Judd covered what would otherwise have been a seventh broad area of hand-painted plywood, with a four and a half square foot piece of 1/8-inch opaque purple plexiglas; the contrast of both colors and materials is defining. This piece, the earliest in the exhibition, is Judd’s first use of plexiglas. Later works include a 1989 (by now unpainted) plywood and brown plexiglas wall-piece, Untitled (89-38 Ballantine), where the browns of the plywood and plexiglas reinforce each other. Plexiglas, manufactured (cast) between sheets of plate glass, takes on the consistent flatness, gloss, and material thickness of glass, but is much lighter and fairly easily worked with hand tools. Transparent plexiglas—either colored or clear—has the optical clarity of glass. Opaque plexiglas, unlike a layer of paint, has, as Judd said, the same saturated color “through and through” and an independent substantiality. This quality of plexiglas being ‘a better paint,’ of being an improvement on applied paint, is only one of the paint-like ways Judd found to use colored plexiglas. His previous use of straight-out-of-the-tube oil paint found a parallel in the strong, but limited variety of standard ‘found’ plexiglas colors. Within ten years he was sometimes even using two layers of plexiglas together, a transparent yellow, for example, over an opaque red, to achieve a third color — not orange, by the way — or, more rarely, colored transparent over paint, similar to something only possible in painting through glazes. There are other ways Judd uses transparent plexiglas that relate directly back to glass, especially stained glass, with its ability to seal, admit light, reveal and color interiors, as seen in a 1966 ’single stack,’ Untitled (DSS 89), and in a 1970 stainless steel and amber plexiglas ‘turnbuckle piece,’ Untitled (DSS 234), where the entire interior and every detail of its dynamic construction is visually accessible. Untitled, 1979 (79-40 Bernstein), an unusual variation on a classic transparent ’stack,’ has red opaque plexiglas top and bottom, referring back to both the glass and paint properties of colored plexiglas. Maximal Minimal, Gallery Andreas Grimm, Munich, Germanyposted March 13th, 2009
Daniel Robert Hunziker, Corner, 2009 March 13 – May 9, 2009 Andreas Grimm München presents MAXIMAL MINIMAL featuring artists Robert Dowling, Terry Haggerty, Daniel Robert Hunziker, Donald Judd, David Renggli, Stefan Sandner, Sebastian Wickeroth & Claudia Wieser. The title of the exhibition is meant to juxtapose the term ‘Minimal Art’ with its antonym ‘Maximal’, not as a paradox or contradiction, but rather as a combination of thoughts on the nature of the works shown. It explains the relationship of the history and influences of Minimalism on contemporary art. From its beginning at the German Bauhaus to the American Minimal Art of the 60’s, the term ‘Minimal’ reflects a reduction within a formal repertoire, but can be misinterpreted as a limitation within its own artistic field. The exhibition shows that despite a formal reduction within individual works, artists achieve a maximal effect on the viewer. The drawings, sculptures and paintings included in the exhibition may suggest that, although the aesthetics of some have a more academic and interpretative meaning rather than an immediate and material approach, aesthetics and substance should not be mistaken as contrasting poles, but rather as coexisting components of Minimal Art. In this way, the exhibition provides different avenues through which the viewer may experience contemporary interpretations of Minimalism. Among Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin, Fred Sandback or Richard Serra, Donald Judd (*1928 in Excelsior Springs/Missouri, †1994, New York, USA) is considered to be one of the pioneers and protagonists of the American Minimalism. His wall sculpture ‚Untitled (87-28 Menziken)’, 1987, shown at Andreas Grimm München points out the spacial dimension of works of Minimal Art as well as its Classicism in terms of the movement. A cursory view on the drawings of Terry Haggerty (*1970 in London, England), which are shown for the first time here, reveals restrained clear, schematic forms and consistent coloration. A closer look shows the capillary pencil strokes that assist the artist in his drawing process. Instead of erasing them afterwards, Haggerty shows them as basic elements of his works. In doing so, he discloses the creative process and the construction of the constructed. The objects of Daniel Robert Hunziker (*1965 in Walenstadt, Switzerland) are positioned between installation and model. Their concrete sources are found mostly in constructions in ones daily environment to which Hunziker looks with the eye of a sculptor. The piece shown in the exhibition, ‘Corner’, 2009, reveals the artist’s particular interest in the interaction between light and material surface. Robert Dowling (*1979 in London, England) gathers simple shapes from a wide variety of sources, which he recombines to produce complex recurring geometric works. Adopting a sculptural approach to making paintings that pop back and forth between 2- and 3- dimensions, his practice echoes and subverts the methodologies and processes of minimalism. We could take David Renggli’s (*1977 in Zurich, Switzerland) work ‘Schloss’, 2009, (german for castle and lock) as though it were in a thwarted dialog with works of Minimalism, which are already considered traditional. The smooth, polished surface of ‘Schloss’ displays, with a subtle irony, the object’s inoperability. We are able to participate in Renggli’s view on the history of art, part criticque of Minimalism, part commentary on the heroizing of the modern ‘masters’ of Minimal Art. In Sebastian Wickeroth’s (*1977 in Issum, Germany) floor sculpture, corrosion counters the formal, geometrical and monochrome perfection. But it is not about the destruction of a sculpture, but to create decomposition as an equal mode of construction. In using simple materials like plasterboard walls, wood, styrofoam and enamel, which are turning into room filling, extensive interventions in space, we could also disclose an artistic statement. By his decision to entitle his work ‘Guess I am doing fine (target)’, 2003, Stefan Sandner (*1968 in Vienna, Austria) sets off the traditional objectivity of Minimal Art. Through this title, the impression of coloured circles fitted into each other and placed on two triangular canvases is channeled toward the idea of a target. Accordingly, viewers’ interpretations of the work are directed away from the non-objective and abstract to the representational, while at the same time, undermining it through the use of combined shaped canvases reminiscent of Color Field and Minimal masters. The exhibition also discusses the boundaries of Minimal Art. Does the viewer come to the decision arbitrarily if he or she views the work of Claudia Wieser (*1973 in Freilassing, Germany) as part of the tradition of Minimalism or not? Her fine line-making practice, which could be seen as at the edge of Minimalism, provokes the idea of Minimalism’s limits. Brandeis University to Close Rose Art Museum and Sell Off Its Collectionposted January 29th, 2009
“The Rose Art Museum on the Brandeis campus houses what is widely recognized as the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. With more than 6,000 objects — paintings, sculptures, works on paper and new media — the Rose collection has particular strengths in American Modernism, American Social Realism, post-War American, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Surrealism and Photorealism. Recent acquisitions include works by Nam June Paik, Anri Sala, William Kentridge, Thomas Demand and Matthew Barney. These names comprise a virtual “who’s who” of art since the 1960s. With its mission to “engage its communities in the experience of modern and contemporary art,” the Rose maintains an active exhibition program, presenting new art while embracing its foundation in historical modern art.” (excerpted from the museum’s web site)
In a move to correct its current operating deficit and shore up its lagging endowment, Brandeis University’s board of trustees recently voted unanimously to close the Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection of art. A few quick thoughts come to mind: 1. Stop treating your museum collection like an ATM machine. Art is not cash.
Recent News Articles Brandeis to sell school’s art collection, by Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm Brandeis to Sell All of Its Art Outcry Over a Plan to Sell Museum’s Holdings, by Randy Kennedy and Carol Vogel Museum backers seek halt to selloff, Say art should stay at Brandeis, by Geoff Edgers Hawk this gem? Unconscionable, by Sebastian Smee Brandeis may keep art, says president, Reaffirms need to close museum, by Geoff Edgers The Rape of the Rose, by David Bonetti Brandeis on the Brink, by Judith H. Dobrzynski In the Closing of Brandeis Museum, a Stark Statement of Priorities, by Roberta Smith Museum director assails Brandeis’ plans Is the University’s Museum Just a Rose to Be Plucked?, by Daniel Grant Audio Interview with Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz, by Tracy Jan Museum Rescue Sought, by Carol Vogel and Randy Kennedy Letter: Brandeis president apologizes for handling of museum issue, by Geoff Edgers
A Letter from the College Art Association (published on January 29, 2009) The College Art Association (CAA) was shocked and dismayed to learn of the decision by BrandeisUniversity to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its entire art collection for operating revenue. CAA supports the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works. However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections. The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years. According to news reports, neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections. Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museumand the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency and due process; the decision also demonstrates a lack of academic responsibility and fiduciary foresight. We appeal to the Trustees of Brandeis to revisit and reverse their decision. Paul B. Jaskot Linda Downs
New Facebook Group
MINUS SPACE welcomes your input! Comment below. Art and Architecture: An Interview with Brad Cloepfi (Part I), PORT, August 11, 2008posted January 21st, 2009
Allied Works Architecture “Brad Cloepfil is the principal of Allied Works Architecture in Portland, Oregon. Allied Works is a nationally recognized architecture firm that has recently completed projects like the extension to the Seattle Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis and is currently finishing the Museum of Art & Design at 2 Columbus Circle in New York. PORT recently sat down with him to ask about the impact artists have had on his work.
PORT: How did your early experience with art feedback into your own creative process as an architect?
Brad Cloepfil: When I was younger, I tended to be influenced by the raw experience of the work itself. At first, I wasn’t even aware of who created a work, whether it was Richard Serra or Robert Irwin, it was the experience of the work itself that was important. The experience makes you ask yourself about the spatial quality of that type of work and about the ideas that those artists are exploring. It just resonates with you. I wasn’t seeing anything comparable in buildings. It just seems like those guys understood more about the intentions of the 19th and 20th century architecture than the architects did. They had clarity of thought and a practice that was built on the exploration of material that became very important to me. The singular act of focus to create a work of art was really impressive. I saw Richard Serra’s Circuit at MoMA and it is just four pieces of steel propped up in the corners of the room. The physical presence and the mass of the steel and its ability to radiate space into the small gallery was for me a very architectural experience that I could relate to much easier than the so-called “architecture” that was being produced at that time. The experience is about the material and the way that the material is made. It was also easier to learn from the artists because their work is so pure. By that I mean, the work that I was interested in was focused on the exploration of only one or two ideas…?”
PORT is dedicated to catalyzing critical discussion and disseminating information about art as lensed through Portland, Oregon. Ronald Bladen: Sculpture, Jacobson Howard Gallery, New York, NYposted October 1st, 2008
October 12 — November 12, 2008 Jacobson Howard Gallery presents an exhibition featuring garden scale sculptures, models, and drawings by Ronald Bladen. Ronald Bladen (1918-1988) is considered one of the founders of Minimalism, but he was also a self-proclaimed romantic. His interest in monumental scale and simple form was less a product of conceptual reductionism, but rather, of an interest in the drama which such forms can inspire. He was interested in the “presence” of a work of art. The solidity and simplicity of his work was intended to reinforce its stature, to stabilize and ground itself as the viewer shifts position. Having evolved out of Abstract Expressionism, Bladen continued throughout his career to seek a kind of transcendent or sublime response from his work. He continued to relate it – in contrast or in likeness – to natural phenomena, a point which put him at odds even with those artists whom he influenced, including Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, and Al Held. Bladen’s work was included in several seminal exhibitions in the 1960’s, including “Primary Structures” at the Jewish Museum in 1966, and “Scale as Content” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1967. He was most recently the subject of a major retrospective at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in 1999. Olle Baertling: A Modern Classic, by David Birnbaum & David Raskin, Published by Steidl/Swedish Books/Moderna Museet, 2007posted September 23rd, 2008
Click to purchase on Amazon.com As a concrete-abstract painter during the 1950s and 60s, Olle Baetling (1911-1981) developed a personal pictorial universe, while also occupying a firm position among the “Salon des Realites Nouvelles” and Galerie Denise Rene in Paris. His work was highly influential to American Op artists and Minimalists like Donald Judd. Kate Shepherd: Stack Shack, Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, East Hampton, NYposted September 15th, 2008
September 20 — November 10, 2008 Kate Shepherd has said of her work that “all art making is a project.” Glenn Horowitz Bookseller presents an exhibition of new work in which Shepherd demonstrates her commitment to the idea of art as an ongoing search for solutions. Stack Shack is an exhibition of paintings, wall drawings and prints, as well as less traditional art objects such as blocks and puzzles. The work calls to mind a variety of ordinary, utilitarian objects including tools, children’s playthings and commercial products while also making visual reference to such touchstones of Modernism as Brancusi’s Endless Column, Donald Judd’s Stack sculptures, and Sol Lewitt’s rules-based wall drawings. What unifies all this is Shepherd’s search for ever more fully resolved solutions to a few basic artistic problems and the attitude of open experimentation that characterizes her process, whether she is making a new painting or something that more nearly resembles a toy. For Shepherd art is not about individual pictures on a wall, it is a way of approaching experience and so this exhibition has been conceived in part as a way to bring the viewer more fully into the process. Several works in the show are composed of brightly colored wooden forms placed with no set arrangement—visitors to the gallery are encouraged to move them around, to stack up or pull down, to create a new order or scatter an existing one. A skeptic might say this is nothing more than playing with blocks but it nonetheless provides a point of entry that shows the method by which Shepherd works. Taking only the basic elements of art—line, color and shape—and leaving them as whole and undiluted as possible she places them together, explores the many different ways they can be made to interact, and looks at the results of these combinations. The interest of the work arises from the complexity of the interactions she creates and the way that one interaction varies from the next. A sense both of endless possibility and of benign order quickly arises, and this sense is all the more satisfying for having emerged from a rigorously pared down beginning point. It is an aesthetic payoff possible only because the work conveys such ease. Unexpected color combinations find a natural balance. Lines achieve striking clarity rather than perfection. Shepherd possesses the sort of mastery wherein difficult effects appear effortless. That the exhibition is interactive, a kind of invitation to participate in this effortless flow, makes Shepherd’s approach to art all the more attractive. Olle Baertling: Paintings 1952-1980, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TXposted September 5th, 2008
Olle Baertling, Rabibk Paris, 1956 October 10, 2008 — May 2009 The Chinati Foundation presents a special exhibition by Swedish painter Olle Baertling (1911-1981). Baertling’s work is widely recognized in Scandinavia — in 2007-08 a major retrospective of his work was co-organized by the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm — but in the U.S. it is largely unknown, even though Baertling exhibited widely here in the 1960s and ’70s. (Donald Judd reviewed Baertling’s exhibition at Columbia University in 1964 and later collected his prints.) Chinati’s exhibition will include 30 paintings and one sculpture spanning Baertling’s career from the early 1950s to 1980 and will be the first solo exhibition of his work in the U.S. in almost 40 years. Baertling began mapping out the rudiments of the pictorial system that would preoccupy him throughout the rest of his life in the early ’50s, when, traveling from Stockholm to Paris and absorbing the new abstract art slowly gaining a foothold there, he renounced his previous representational work and committed himself to abstraction. In the years 1953-54, he discovered what would become the essential components of his work: rich fields of single, unmodulated color, outlined in black and formed into triangles which neither originate nor end within the space of the painting itself. For almost thirty years, these simple-seeming devices generated a rich field of possibilities for Baertling as he experimented with different configurations of line, shape, and color. Later in his career, Baertling began making sculpture in addition to his painting and also created designs for buildings and clothes. The Chinati Foundation’s exhibition will include works from all three decades of Baertling’s mature activity. Statements: Beuys, Flavin, Judd, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MNposted May 8th, 2008
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1971 May 15, 2008 — July 12, 2009 Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd were contemporaries of thought rather than form. Each took sculpture off its pedestal—literally and figuratively—and expanded the conventions of what constitutes a work of art, influencing scores of artists to do the same. Grouping Beuys, Flavin, and Judd in a new exhibition from the Walker’s collection provides “a snapshot of a vital moment in postwar cultural production,” says assistant curator Yasmil Raymond, and allows viewers to trace the influence of their ideas in contemporary art. “With this exhibition, visitors will see three different ‘statements’ that reflect distinct positions towards art-making and the ways in which these artists addressed the autonomy of art, its nature, and its social power. These are concerns that this generation of artists set in motion and continue to have relevance for artists today.” When Donald Judd Came to Portland, PORT — Portland Art + News + Reviewsposted May 4th, 2008
“The Portland Center for Visual Arts (PCVA) was based on a very simple premise: artists talking to artists. The PCVA was founded in 1971 by three artists Jay Backstrand, Mel Katz, and Michele Russo. The exhibition space was located on the third floor of 117 NW Fifth Ave. Katz wanted to give something to the community as well as bring to Portland some of the things that he missed from New York. Usually, the PCVA sent a letter to an artist explaining that they wanted to have a exhibition of the artist’s work in the Northwest and could they follow up with a phone call the following week. This was a strategy that proved to be tremendously successful and they were soon able to attract some of the best artists in the country to come to Portland and have a show. The PVCA was unique in every sense of the word. The artists liked working with the PCVA because although there was a limited budget for each of the shows, there was never any limit to an artist’s ideas. After the first few New York artists had a good experience working in Portland, the PCVA had an excellent reputation and the original artists often recommended other artists who might be willing to come out here…“ Donald Judd: The Writing of ‘Specific Objects’, 1965, Judd Foundation, Marfa, TXposted April 27th, 2008
May 3 — September 30, 2008 To Infinity and Beyond: Mathematics in Contemporary Art, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NYposted April 13th, 2008
Mel Bochner, Theorem of Pythagoras, 1997 April 19 — June 22, 2008 Our era is driven by the possibilities inherent in reducing countless observations to one mathematical formula and of generating seemingly random phenomena from a set of precise rules. The geometry of the universe has been summarized in E=mc 2, the Book of Life has been translated into the four-letter code of DNA, and machines computing with two digits have discerned patterns in the world of science and in everyday life. Yet despite its central position in the modern intellectual landscape, mathematics has often mystified the non-specialist because its secrets are written in a foreign language of mathematical symbols. The intent of To Infinity and Beyond is to describe the ideas that drive mathematics—numbers, geometry, pattern, and so on—and to demonstrate how artists have expressed these topics. The exhibition will include an international selection of art inspired by mathematics, and the exhibition scripting will illuminate the sources of the work as found in symbols, formulas and graphs. Approximating a pictorial visualization of abstract concepts, To Infinity and Beyond will reveal the profound impact that these diagrams and patterns have had on the artists who create today’s visual environment, and demonstrate that mathematics—because of its abstractness—is the international language of exact thought. Artists include: Richard Anuskiewicz, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Roz Chast, Rupert Deese, Grace DeGennaro, Pedro De Movellan, Agnes Denes, M.C. Escher, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Micha Lexier, Sol Lewitt, Anthony McCall, Manfred Mohr, Sharon Molloy, Francois Morellet, Olivia Parker, Rosamond Purcell, Rick Purdy, James Sanborn, Tom Shannon, Stephen Sollins, Bernar Venet, Julian Voss-Andreae, Ouattara Watts, Melvin Way, Rebecca Welz, Kevin Wixted and Richard Yarde. The Writings of Donald Judd: A Chinati Foundation Symposium, Marfa, TXposted February 29th, 2008
May 3-4, 2008 The Chinati Foundation is pleased to announce a symposium dedicated to the writings of the late artist and museum founder Donald Judd. The symposium will offer a diverse range of presentations and subjects. Among the topics to be considered will be the relationship of Judd’s writings to his art; his use of language and syntax; Judd’s political views; how Judd produced and edited his essays; and Judd’s art criticism and its relevance today. Chinati’s symposium will focus on the critical essays and reviews of Donald Judd, one of the most significant artists of the last fifty years and the founder of the Chinati Foundation. Judd was a prolific writer from the late 1950s to the end of his life in 1994. He produced important pieces on art, architecture and their cultural and political contexts. Some of these are well known, others not. Judd was well-informed and outspoken, and from its very first publication his writing showed a distinctive style: it was direct, unusually hard-hitting, and yet marked by moments of subtle irony and humor. Olle Bærtling: A Modern Classic, Steidl/Swedish Books/Moderna Museet, 2007posted December 15th, 2007
Purchase on Amazon.com As a concrete-abstract painter during the 1950s and 60s, Olle Bærtling (1911-1981) developed a personal pictorial universe, while also occupying a firm position among the “Salon des Realités Nouvelles” and Galerie Denise René in Paris. His work was highly influential to American Op artists and Minimalists like Donald Judd. Introduction by Ustvedt Nilsson, John Peter Øystein. Text by David Birnbaum, Daniel Raskin. Price $40. Minimalism and After I: Objects for Imaginative and Real Use, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germanyposted November 11th, 2007
Nic Hess, König Gerrit [King Gerrit], 2007 (detail) September 21, 2007 — January 27, 2008 The Daimler Art Collection presents the exhibition Minimalism and Applied I at Daimler Contemporary, Haus Huth, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. The exhibition explores the relationship that exists between minimalist formal language and applied art. As the subtitle of the exhibition suggests these ‘transfers’ can be useful for imagination, association and play. Our exhibition at the same time represents the beginning of a new thematic focus to be continued in the next future. Approaching the theme from the perspective of the collection’s history, the exhibition aims at encouraging a dialogue between the developments in the areas as an open dialogue. We have abstained from providing a pure comparative presentation of art and design and have opted to place the main focus on artists of our collection who have been active in both areas. These range from names such as Josef Albers and Arakawa/Gins to contemporary position like Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig and Leonor Antunes. The works by these 25 artists are complemented pars pro toto by designs from Renzo Piano, the architect of Potsdamer Platz, as well as by design products from Gerrit Rietveld, Herbert Krenchel, Charles Eames and Konstantin Grcic. As one can derive from these names the aspects of applied art are represented in the fields of architecture, graphic design, logos and branding, as well as furniture design. Participating artists include Josef Albers (D), Ruby Anemic (D), Leonor Antunes (P), Arakawa/Gins (J/USA), Eva Berendes (D), Max Bill (CH), Martin Boyce (GB), Krysten Cunningham (USA), Stéphane Dafflon (F), Karl Duschek (D), Maria Eichhorn (D), Ossi Fink (I), Konstantin Grcic (D), Nic Hess (CH), Donald Judd (USA), Kazuo Katase (J), Imi Knoebel (D), Herbert Krenchel (DK), Sylvan Lionni (USA), Alexander Liberman (USA), Richard Merkle (D), Isamu Noguchi (J), Danica Phelps (USA), Renzo Piano (I), Gerrit Rietveld (NL), Meg Shirayama (GB), Anton Stankowski (D), Franz Erhard Walther (D), Franz West (A), Georg Winter (D), Lars Wolter (D), Andrea Zittel (USA), Heimo Zobernig (A). Small Differences Make All the Difference, by Lynne Harlowposted August 20th, 2007
In his series of lectures, Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock, Kirk Varnedoe asks tough questions. Why abstract art? What is abstract art good for? These questions, the topic of his six lectures, are familiar. It seems to me that they are asked, and in a sense answered, every time an artist makes an abstract work. They are the questions that artists ask as we wrestle with the history of abstraction and as we work to move abstraction forward. And for artists making abstract work now, Pictures of Nothing is necessary reading. The 2006 publication of these lectures, given as the National Gallery of Art’s Mellon Lectures in 2003, offers the many of us who could not attend the talks access to his clear, concise, deeply informed and often funny examination of the art of the last fifty years. The discussion of abstraction begins, after a very brief summary of the early 20th Century, with the 1950s – the Cold War and Abstract Expressionism. While it progresses to 2003 in a fairly linear chronology, Varnedoe also moves sideways, describing the significance of multiple and seemingly contradictory things happening at once.
James Turrell, A Frontal Passage, 1994 Pop Art and Minimalism emerging from the same moment. Frank Stella making paintings that are equal parts Pollock and Johns. Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman make quiet, subtle works that appear similar but are worlds apart. Although Varnedoe is forced, in the interest of time, to omit many artists and works that could have been included, he’s not working in art historical generalities. He’s looking at specific ideas, moments and relationships. With regard to this he says, “Epochs do not have essences, history does not work by all-governing unities, and works of art in their quirkiness tend to resist generalities.”
Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II, 1959 As he leads us through de Kooning, Johns, Judd, Kelly, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Hesse, De Maria, Turrell, Halley, Richter, Marden and Serra (and many others), Varnedoe keeps an emphasis on experience and our responses to the very particular details of a piece. Small differences, he says, make all the difference. Whether it’s how we experience the work directly or how the work relates to our experiences in the world, he ties the art to our personal encounters. Through this he builds his argument that abstraction isn’t grounded in something universal. Rather it’s based on responses that are our own. Subjective. Individual. It’s this, a culture that coheres because it values independence, that abstraction offers us. In Varnedoe’s words, “This is why abstract art, and modern art in general, being based on subjective experience and open-ended interpretation, is not universal or the culmination of anything in history but the contingent phenomena of a modern, secular, liberal society.”
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968 Varnedoe concludes with a reference to the faith that abstract art requires. As he describes it, “Not a faith in absolutes, not a religious kind of faith. A faith in possibility, a faith not that we will know something finally, but a faith in not knowing…” His faith, his unwavering belief in abstract art is present in every word of these lectures and it’s what makes his insights and arguments so extraordinary. A modern, secular, liberal society. That’s something to have faith in.
Lynne Harlow is a New York City-based artist. She will present a project at MINUS SPACE project space in December 2007. Kirk Varnedoe. Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock. Foreword by Earl A. Powell III, preface by Adam Gopnik. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2006. 101 Spring Street, NYC, Judd Foundationposted April 2nd, 2007
Donald Judd purchased 101 Spring Street in 1968, which served as both his studio and residence for many years. It is considered to be the birthplace of installation art. All works on view at 101 Spring Street were installed by Judd. Public tours of the space are available every Friday at 11am. Fee $30 ($15 for artists). Josef Albers / Donald Judd: Form and Color, PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York, NYposted February 20th, 2007
January 26— February 24, 2007 |
||||
