Donald Judd

This pioneering book, the first monograph devoted to Donald Judd, addresses the whole breadth of Judd€s practices. Drawing on documents found in nearly twenty archives, David Raskin explains why some of Judd€s works of art seem startlingly ephemeral while others remain insistently physical. In the process of answering this previously perplexing question, Raskin traces Judd€s principles from his beginnings as an art critic through his fabulous installations and designs in Marfa, Texas. He discusses Judd€s early important paintings and idiosyncratic red objects, as well as the three-dimensional works that are celebrated throughout the world. He also examines Judd€s commitment to empirical values and his political activism, and concludes by considering the importance of Judd€s example for recent art.

Ultimately, Raskin develops a picture of Judd as never before seen: he shows us an artist who asserted his individuality with spare designs; who found spiritual values in plywood, Plexiglas, and industrial production; who refused to distinguish between thinking and feeling while asserting that science marked the limits of knowledge; who claimed that his art provided intuitions of morality but not a specific set of tenets; and who worked for political causes that were neither left nor right.