Extended through January 22, 2022
About
I think the origin of my work does lie in painting. My work doesn’t arise from sculpture; it comes out of the paintings of Pollock, Newman, Rothko.
—Donald Judd
Gagosian is pleased to present the gallery’s first exhibition of work by Donald Judd (1928–1994) in New York since announcing its representation of the artist and Judd Foundation in September. The exhibition features fifteen paintings dating from 1959 through 1961.
While Judd’s oeuvre is defined principally through his three-dimensional work—which he conceived in opposition to the essential properties of both conventional painting and sculpture—he began his practice as a painter while also taking graduate courses in art history at Columbia University in New York. In addition, he supported himself as a critic: beginning in 1959, and continuing for the next five years, he wrote prolifically for Art News and Arts Magazine, publishing incisive essays and reviews of contemporary art during a momentous era. Judd’s paintings make manifest the understanding of postwar modernism that he articulated in his writing.
The paintings on view are nonrepresentational and reject spatial illusionism. They precede relief works made later in 1961 in which Judd incorporated found objects, while his concern with volumetric space led him to abandon painting altogether by the following year. Featuring biomorphic shapes in blue and purple, as well as fields of white, black, gray, and cadmium red, they reflect an exploratory approach to formal issues of structure, materiality, and color. Their application ranges from dense impasto to thin wash, underpainting emerging at times through the layers of pigment.
#DonaldJudd
In Conversation
Eileen Costello, Marta Kuzma, and Caitlin Murray on Donald Judd: Paintings
Art historian Eileen Costello and Yale School of Art professor Marta Kuzma discuss Donald Judd’s two-dimensional work and how the lessons he learned from the innovations of Abstract Expressionist and Color Field paintings permeate his entire body of work. Their conversation is moderated by Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation.
In Conversation
Peter Ballantine and Martha Buskirk on Donald Judd
Peter Ballantine, Donald Judd’s longtime fabricator of plywood works, and Martha Buskirk, professor of art history and criticism at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, discuss the development, production, and history of the largest plywood construction Judd ever made, an untitled work from 1980.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022
The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.
There is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part 2
In this second installment of a two-part essay, Julian Rose continues his exploration of Donald Judd’s engagement with architecture. Here, he examines the artist’s proposals for projects in Bregenz, Austria, and in Basel, arguing that Judd’s approach to shaping space provides a model for contemporary architectural production.
Building a Legacy
Judd Foundation Archives
Richard Shiff speaks with Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation, about the archive of Donald Judd, how to approach materials that occupy the gray area between document and art, and some of the considerations unique to stewarding an archive housed within and adjacent to spaces conceived by the artist.
There Is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part 1
Julian Rose explores the question: what does it mean for an artist to make architecture? Delving into the archives of Donald Judd, he examines three architectural projects by the artist. Here, in the first installment of a two-part essay, he begins with an invitation in Bregenz, Austria, in the early 1990s, before turning to an earlier project, in Marfa, Texas, begun in 1979.
News
In Conversation
Eileen Costello and Marta Kuzma on Donald Judd
Moderated by Caitlin Murray
Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 7pm est
Join Gagosian for a conversation between art historian Eileen Costello and Yale School of Art professor Marta Kuzma, moderated by Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation, on the occasion of the exhibition Donald Judd: Paintings 1959–1961 at Gagosian, New York. Livestreaming from the exhibition in Chelsea, the trio will discuss Judd’s two-dimensional work and how the lessons he learned from the innovations of Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painters—including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko—permeate his entire body of work. To join the online event, register at eventbrite.com.
Donald Judd, untitled, 1961 © Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever