Judd Foundation
Donald Judd
Untitled, 1962
Cadmium red light oil on wood with black enameled metal pipe
48 × 32 1/2 × 21 1/4 inches
(121.9 × 82.6 × 54 cm)
Donald Judd wrote of this piece:
In 1962 I made a right angle of wood placed directly on the floor. . . . The size of the right angle is determined by the right angle of a black pipe, whose two open ends are the centers of the outer planes of the right angle, which is painted cadmium red light; red and black, and black as space. The right angle doesn’t stand or sit and although it is vertical, 122 centimeters high, there is no way to believe it to be an abstracted figure, or an abstracted object. All sides are equal. There is scarcely an inside and an outside, only the space within the angle and the space beyond the angle. The only enclosed space is inside the pipe. This slight linear space determines the dimensions of the broad planes. The shell of this narrow space passes through the breadth of the inner angle, a definite space through a general space.1
In a 1971 interview, Judd said of this and another early floor piece, “I was surprised when I made those first two free-standing pieces, to have something set out into the middle of the room. It puzzled me. On the one hand, I didn’t know quite what to make of it, and on the other, they suddenly seemed to have an enormous number of possibilities. It looked at that point and from then on that I could do anything.”2
1 Donald Judd, “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular” (1993), in Donald Judd Writings, ed. Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray (New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016), 838–39.
2 “Don Judd: An Interview with John Coplans,” in John Coplans, Don Judd, exh. cat. (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1971), 30.
Selected Bibliography
Coplans, John. Don Judd. Exh. cat. Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1971, 23, 25, 27 (plate 11). Reprinted: Coplans, John. “An Interview with Don Judd.” Artforum, Summer 1971, 41, 42 (fig. 5), 43.
Agee, William C. “Unit, Series, Site: A Judd Lexicon.” Art in America, May/June 1975, 41.
Smith, Brydon, ed. Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects, and Wood-Blocks 1960–1974. Exh. cat. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975, 21, 23, 52 (exh. cat. no. 10), 111 (DSS cat. no. 33).
Judd, Donald. Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular. Sassenheim: Sikkens Foundation, 1993, 9.
Kellein, Thomas. Donald Judd. Early Work 1955–1968. Exh. cat. New York: D.A.P., 2002, 105 (ill.), 154.
Donald Judd: 50 x 100 x 50 / 100 x 100 x 50. Exh. cat. New York: PaceWildenstein, 2002, 10 (fig. 2), 11.
Serota, Nicholas, ed. Donald Judd. Exh. cat. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, 137 (ill.), 170–171 (cat. no. 5).