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untitled
untitled
untitled

untitled

Artist (American, 1928 - 1994)
Date1967
MediumStainless steel and Plexiglas
DimensionsOverall: 191 5/8 x 40 x 31 in. (486.73 x 101.6 x 78.74 cm)
Unit (each): 9 1/8 x 40 x 31 in. (23.18 x 101.6 x 78.74 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Benjamin J. Tillar Memorial Trust
Object number1970.18.A-J
Status
On view
Copyright© 2020 Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Category
Label TextDonald Judd’s untitled, 1967, is a classic example of Minimalism, a style for which the artist was largely responsible. The work is characterized by a clarity of materials and form, the result of Judd’s consideration of space, color, and scale. It also declares an emphatic unity as a single object, even though it is made from ten discrete, identical boxes placed one above the other.

Trained as a painter in the 1950s, Judd retained certain aspects of the medium—the use of color and the wall as support—in his three-dimensional work beginning in 1962. After working in painted plywood and in pursuit of more precision, he switched to sheet metal to create hollow forms whose construction was obvious to the viewer. In a career-defining decision, he turned to the expertise of a local shop in New York, Bernstein Brothers Sheet Metal, that specialized in HVAC ventilation ductwork. Based on the technicians’ skills and equipment, the works produced for Judd were primarily in galvanized iron.

As his finances allowed, Judd employed less pedestrian industrial materials, such as stainless steel. As early as 1963, Judd replaced painted surfaces, which conceal the identity of the underlying materials, with colored Plexiglas. The amber transparent Plexiglas in the Museum's piece allows visual access to the interior of the rectangular boxes. His goal was always to reveal the shape and structure of his work.

The Modern’s work is part of a series known as “stacks,” all composed of identical units stacked vertically and spaced evenly apart. Each box element is humanly graspable, while the work as a whole towers above the visitor, echoing the architectural relation of parts to whole in the Modern’s Tadao Ando–designed building.