20 Aug, 2022
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century, minimalism has been seen by many as a design trend in nearly all fields; art, furniture, architecture, technology and even lifestyle. Donald Judd was one of the pioneers of minimalism with his work across several disciplines. While he refused to call himself a minimalist, he inspired many of the greatest artists and architects of the century. In this paper, I will be reviewing his essay "On Architecture", where he criticizes Post-Modern style and voices his concerns about the diminishing role of architects. I will then be looking at two of his projects—101 Spring Street and untitled concrete blocks in Marfa—to see how his opinions are transferred to his work. His underlaying intension was to define space, whether this was a seemingly flat painting or three-dimensional object. His critiques of post-modern design called for a connection between art and architecture with more of an emphasis on both style and spatial interaction with the viewer.
Minimalist design has entered multiple disciplines, each with its own definition. In general, minimalism emerged as a rejection of abstraction that represents something unlike the piece itself. Minimalist artists wanted their work to be independent from meaning and emphasize the viewer’s experience and interaction by prioritizing weight, height, shape, light, and form. Much of their inspiration comes from the ideas of Zen and living with only the necessities: a focus on simplicity and inner freedom. Minimalism brings attention to materiality and purity.
Minimalist architecture shares many of these traits. It often has little to no ornamentation and uses only essential materials needed for the structure to stand. Other characteristics may include pure geometric forms, simple materials, straight lines, repetition, and open or void spaces. Rather than the emphasis being on the building itself, it celebrates light, nature, space, materials, and form.
One of the most well-known minimalist buildings is the Farnsworth House designed by Mies van der Rohe. Built in 1951, it served as a weekend home for Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Just over 1800 square feet, the building consists of a rectangular roof and floor supported by exposed I-beams. There are no interior walls, and the envelope is made of floor to ceiling windows. Mies wanted to highlight the occupant's experience with the surrounding landscape. The interior consists of a central core with the kitchen and bathroom elements hidden. The building gives the impression of simplicity and lightness; it even appears to be floating. Overall, there are no hidden complexities in the design. Everything is clearly presented through first look from the exterior.
Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House
Minimalism emerged throughout the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1929, Adolf Loos’ essay "On Ornament and Crime" was one of the first times a designer called for more simplicity. Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe took these ideas to their buildings. The idea of minimalism became popular after Frank Stella’s "Black Painting" exhibit at the MoMA in 1958 featuring several canvases filled regulated smooth black lines created with house paint. His aim was to convey the flatness of the canvas, rather than a window looking at a three-dimensional space. The focus is on form, shape, and composition.
Frank Stella, Zambezi, 1959
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1962
While Stella’s paintings brought minimalism into the spotlight, Judd had begun working with this style well before. Donald Judd was born in 1928 in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. He served in the United States Army in Korea from 1946-47 before attending school at the College of William and Mary and Columbia University. His paintings onward saw curves and shapes that followed no distinct pattern, yet define planes in space. In his untitled work shown to the left, blue lines create a new plane on and otherwise flat surface. Judd is defining space with respect to both the canvas and the viewer.
He writes in his 1967 essay "Art in America", “The main virtue of geometric shapes is that they aren’t organic, as all art otherwise is. A form that’s neither geometric or organic would be a great discovery.” He states that the only way to achieve a painting with no dimensions would be to produce a monochromic work, like Yves Klein’s blue paintings (right). Their purpose was to celebrate the color and elicit an emotion rather than create space.
Yves Klein, IKB 79, 1959
Defining space was Judd’s goal with whatever medium he was working in, and he viewed architecture as creating one’s surroundings. This was done with both the building itself as well as what it held: art, furniture, kitchen utensils, and even the interior of his Land Rover. In his essay "On Architecture", he criticizes Post-Modern style. He argues that the Department of Buildings has such tight regulations that dictate how a building is designed and leaves no room for “good architecture”. In in cities like New York, the sign on the front of the building is the only thing that dictates it from others. The building itself has no characteristics.
Commercialism results in buildings that can be mass-produced. This has created a separation between art and architecture. He writes, “The simplest reason for this is that architecture as a useful activity is thoroughly within the society, within its conventions, its institutions, and its bureaucracies and is definitely in business, while art is usually peripheral to the society, made by outsiders willing to be poor….The division between art and architecture is a result of this difference in attitude and in position within the society.” Here, Judd is arguing that the role of architects has dwindled to be creating a pre-determined structures, and society views style as unnecessary. As a result, building exhibit very little creativity, vernacular qualities, or respect for the environment. To achieve successful, form and function must be of equal importance.
Exterior of 101 Spring Street
His view on architecture can be seen in his New York City studio, 101 Spring Street. In 1968, Judd bought a corner 5-story cast iron 1870 building Soho. The purpose was to use the first two floors for gallery space and upper three for living. In his 1989 essay, 101 Spring Street, Judd hypothesized that the original use was a former clothing factory that sold goods on the first floor. The interior was ruined with oil stains on the floors, and a fire escape on the façade that was built after the Triangle Fire ruined much of the details; this could have been where his distaste of building regulations first started.
Besides cleaning and minor repairs, Judd wanted to leave the building nearly untouched. It was from the Cast-Iron district of Manhattan, and he wanted to celebrate this. The original building had no evidence of existing internal walls, so Judd decided that each floor was for its own purpose: gallery, living, cooking/eating, and sleeping. Whenever he added something, he left his touch so that people knew it was him and not the original building. This is evident on the 3rd floor in which the new oak floor does not quite reach the original wall. He purposefully excluded a baseboard to define each floor, wall, and ceiling as a separate plane.
101 Spring Street shows Judd’s desire to merge art and life. While it served as both a gallery and living space, he treated the design of both with equal care. In the living space, Judd purposefully chose every item, designing most of them himself. This included a daybed, two Aalto chairs, a table, and a bed raised on plinth with a simple white duvet. Everything he added and where it was placed was purposeful, down to the hanging mixing spoon.
In the gallery space, Judd connected content and context. When choosing art to display, he rejected many because they were too elaborate and went against what the building stood for. The placement of each piece in relation to the space and to other paintings was nearly as important as the pieces themselves. The works had to have dialogue.
In sum, 101 Spring Street demonstrates Judd’s view on vernacular architecture and leaving the building to represent the time period from which it is from. It also marks his focus on both the content and context of showcasing art. Finally, it demonstrates how he viewed architecture as defining one’s space, down to the smallest details.
Interior Views of Judd’s Living Spaces in 101 Spring Street
Marfa National Bank, One of Judd’s Studios
In the later part of Judd’s life, he needed an escape from the city and found his hiatus in Marfa, Texas; a rural town near the south-west Mexico boarder. After renting a small house for eight years, he purchased former airplane hangars and warehouses in 1979 to create permanent installations. When renovating the buildings, he took the same approach as he did in 101 Spring Street: leaving it nearly untouched, celebrating its history, and creating a relationship between content and context.
In one of the first buildings he renovated for gallery space (above), the walls were constructed from former buildings in Marfa, and this was the most important to keep. In his 1985 essay, "Marfa", he states, “As in most American cities and towns, there is little concern for old buildings. In Russia the past is fully remembered and in the United States it is fully forgotten.” Coming a small town to a big city, Judd wanted to ensure the character still held. In his essay, he also explains how important vernacular architecture was in creating his installations, citing that he hired residents and insisted on using local material to build the structures; that way, his buildings would be genuine and not imitations of south-western architecture.
Sketches of works 3-6 with Question Marks
The first two formations were built in the fall of 1980. The focus was on size, location, orientation, and configuration. Judd wanted them to run along the North-South axis and be exactly 60-meters apart. His early inspiration was lines and triangles, later incorporating different shapes likes Ls and Ts.
The next four parts were built the following March. Moving from placement and arrangement, Judd focused more on the form of each rectangle. Each of the structures follows one of the following rules: one short side open, one long side open, both short sides open, both long sides open. The pattern they follow is not specific; Judd even wrote question marks in his sketches. However, these four alternate between triangular and rectangular formations. By focusing on form, Judd is expanding his play of spatial awareness and interaction with light.
The eighth piece was completed in 1982, followed by seven, nine, ten, and eleven in 1983. His sketches indicate that his focus for these pieces were on opening and closing parts of the prisms to give the illusion of lightness, transparency, and darkness depending on the viewer’s location and time of day.
For the remaining four pieces, he created them with more elements and a preference of rows with a front or viewing side. By doing so, it creates the interplay of light and shade more dramatically from a distance then up close. Each rectangle was open on one or both sides. In formation twelve, they are equidistant dark forms. In thirteen, there are two rows of three elements with the front row open on both side and back row open to only one side; thus, one side is perceived as dark and the other light. In fourteen, there are two rows with a different form and separated by 5 meters. Finally, fifteen is unlike any of the other structures, forming all six prisms into seemingly one large.
Formation 7 viewing Formation 8
Formation 13
Formation 14
This piece showcases many of Judd’s philosophies on both architecture and minimalist design. To start, these pieces are not disturbing the land in anyway. They are simply placed on an open field; visitors have even found wildlife living inside. In addition, they respond to the climate. In "Marfa", Judd describes the hot summers with need for shade; these prisms provide just that. They were also constructed by workers in the surrounding areas using local concrete.
The prisms were designed to be standalone or “specific objects”—what Judd refers to his three-dimensional works as. They are about the interaction between the viewer and the piece. Visitors are invited to go inside and explore.
By creating the same basic shape with different orientations and forms, the piece itself if a function of light. From the images shown above, the material changes hue depending on the time of day. In addition, the way the shadows are formed changes throughout the year; the piece will look different from one day, one hour to the next. The ideas of human interaction and celebrating nature are pillars of minimalist design.
Finally, Judd is defining space in the simplest way. From an open field with only one plane, he has added multiple dimensions of interior and exterior space. This is true with all his projects, from paintings to vast permanent installations. This shows the interplay between art, architecture, and space.
In conclusion Donald Judd was one of the pioneers of minimalism. His objective in all his pursuits was to define space; from seemingly simple paintings, to art studios and living spaces, to three dimensional pieces. For him, content and context are equally important. Architecture is so much more than designing buildings based on codes and regulations; architecture is creating space and defining it as your own.
Sources:
“History of the Farnsworth House.” The Farnsworth House , n.d. https://farnsworthhouse.org/history-farnsworth-house/.
“Donald Judd Artist Overview and Analysis.” The Art Story, June 5, 2004. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/judd-donald/life-and-legacy/.
Murg, Stephaine. “See Why Donald Judd’s Geometries Work Well as Architecture, Too.” Introspective Magazine, November 27, 2017.
“Minimalism Movement Overview and Analysis.” The Art Story, March 21, 2015.https://www.theartstory.org/movement/minimalism/.
Judd, Donald. “On Architecture,” 1984.
“Architecture.” The Judd Foundation, n.d. https://juddfoundation.org/artist/architecture-design/.
Fazzare, Elizabeth. “Donald Judd, Architect?” Architectural Digest, November 16, 2017.
Judd, Donald. “Specific Objects,” 1964.
Judd, Donald. “101 Spring Street,” 1989.
Lange, Alexandra. “Donald Judd’s House.” The New Yorker, May 13, 2015.
Judd, Donald. “Marfa, Texas,” 1985.
Stockebrand, Marianne. “The Marking of Two Spaces: Donald Judd's Installation at the
Chinati's Foundation,” February 26, 2004.
Goodwin, Anne. “Donald Judd Found Perfect Canvas In Texas Town.” National Public
Radio, January 31, 2009. https://www.npr.org/2009/01/31/99130809/donald-judd-found-perfect-canvas-in-texas-town.