I’m very interested in Donald Judd’s work, and the thoughts he expressed about Minimalist art.

I find the bold simplicity of many of his sculptural pieces deeply satisfying – his confidence in the power of simplicity and the clear intentionality that underpins them.

And I feel that my own art shares with him a desire to create abstract works which focus on the purity of colour, and form and which honour the material itself.

And I find it illuminating that he rejects the label of his work being Minimalist – seeing it instead as a simple means to express complex ideas. I love that concept and aspire to being able to achieve it in my works. Using grids as a key element Judd’s work ( like his forerunner Sol LeWitt) bridges Minimalism and conceptual art.  This is where I see my own work this year sitting.

Rosalind Krauss asserted in the essay ‘Grids’ (in her book the Originality of the Avant-Garde) that

‘the grid functions to declare the modernity of modern art’.

She goes on to explain

By “discovering” the grid cubism, de Stijl, Mondrian, Malevich … landed in a place that was out of reach of everything that went before. Which is to say, they landed in the present, and everything else was declared to be the past’. From this milestone appearance in art grids have continued to be used by Modernist and Post Modernist artists and their forms and function continue to evolve.

Judd’s use of grids and grid-like compositions in the 1960’s and 70’s illustrate to me the enduring power of the grid as an artistic device.

Quote from Tate Modern website:

”One of the most significant American artists of the post-war period, Donald Judd changed the course of modern sculpture. This exhibition is the first substantial retrospective of his work in three-dimensions since 1988, and the first to trace his career up to his death in 1994. Working in New York in the 1960s, Judd became known as one of the key exponents of ‘Minimalism’, but it was a label that he strongly rejected. Although he shared many of the principles identified with Minimalist art — the use of industrial materials to create abstract works that emphasise the purity of colour, form, space and materials — he preferred to describe his own work as ‘the simple expression of complex thought’.”