Donald Judd, Untitled

we're looking at a sculpture that in many ways doesn't really seem to be a sculpture right there's not freestanding it's not it's more like a relief but it's not really a really not really cuz there was no background that is attached to and they're isolated units all the same that's right this is a work by Donald Judd and it's a piece of minimalist sculpture and it was done in 1969 and it's an untitled work he would have had the exact same form replicated over and over again so each one of those boxes that you see there were not made by him and it was also made in a factory so it has a kind of a machine made as that it do it somehow seems to me like it's made to sort of interact in the space of the gallery absolutely in fact he's very specific in giving instructions how to hang this you know how to attach it to the wall that each one be spaced six inches apart and usually the work is supposed to go or the first time I was made it was supposed to be evenly spaced all the way up to the ceiling so it would be somewhat dictated by the height by a normal height of a seen ceiling of course I would change depending on what spacer but this one doesn't do that right I think that's because of the photograph and particularly it's made of something that has a reflective surface high Sheen to it the outside of it is brass and then the it's difficult to see here but there are plexi kind of windows that are the tops of each one of these boxes so you can see through it and sometimes depending on which piece it is they're intensely colored like pink or kind of a yellowish color or translucent so they create creates that interact with the space and creates a kind of a shadow and coloristic effect on the wall the blank wall of the gallery so should we be thinking back here to sculptures made of bronze I think so but also the negation of that one of the things that Judd and other minimalists are trying to do are to be of their time there's a whole tradition that he's continuing of modern art you know where you choose the materials and the themes of your own time and here to choose something that is brass which can be used in older art but to make it look like it's sheet metal something that comes out of a factory and in fact is not made by him but made by other workers is very important and the plexi isn't altogether really stable to our factory industrial culture exactly and it is what it is it doesn't disguise itself he's very explicit about not trying to make illusionistic art so he doesn't want to make a sculpture look like a person or a space that isn't there instead they're clearly boxes and the plexi allows you to see that they're not solid so there's a clarity and a literal quality that he wants to bring out and it also reminds me of a skyscraper or other kinds of modernist forms right it does evoke that and just the sheer replication of the same form over and over again Sajjad yeah suggesting machine production and one thing being going shopping and everything the same in the grocery store makes ended versions of the same thing right kind of a product like quality too and it's easy to see how the clean qualities of it the shininess of it and also the plexi maybe at first glance it seems oversimplified but Unferth scrutiny there's a lot of color and reflection and light at place you