Donald Judd Quotes & Sayings

There's probably more in the American tradition than people give the place credit for. — Donald Judd

It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place. — Donald Judd

Stuart Davis has more to do with what the United States is like than Hopper. — Donald Judd

Color, to continue had to occur in space. — Donald Judd

Tolstoy may not be showing that much of Russia at that time even. It's hard to tell. You tend to associate the quality of the period with what's lasted - what's still good. And that quality becomes the whole period. — Donald Judd

They certainly aren't connected with the old geometric art. My work isn't geometric in that sense. — Donald Judd

Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all. — Donald Judd

In the summer there are twelve cottonwoods around the pool, which in the winter become an elevated thicket. There is also a courtyard with a small garden of plants that stay green all year. The winter is bleak. This place is primarily for the installation of art, necessarily for whatever architecture of my own that can be included in an existing situation, for work, and altogether for my idea of living. — Donald Judd

And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League. — Donald Judd

Art and architecture
all the arts
do not have to exist in isolation, — Donald Judd

After all, the work isn't the point; the piece is. — Donald Judd

Well, I don't think anyone now would say that they're painting the state of the culture of America. I think that's too grand and pompous a thing for anybody to claim. — Donald Judd

I think most of the best new work is intended to have much more impact at once. — Donald Judd

The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years. — Donald Judd

Pollock looks unusual and radical even now. — Donald Judd

And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman. — Donald Judd

It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful. — Donald Judd

Well, its very exasperating when you can't get it right. — Donald Judd

You're getting rid of the things that people used to think were essential to art. But that reduction is only incidental. I object to the whole reduction idea ... if my work is reductionist it's because it doesn't have the elements that people thought should be there. But it has other elements I like. — Donald Judd

I haven't sufficient interest in objects or anything I can see around me to do what Oldenburg does. — Donald Judd

Usually when someone says a thing is too simple, they're saying that certain familiar things aren't there, and they're seeing a couple maybe that are left, which they count as a couple, that's all. — Donald Judd

Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. — Donald Judd

I don't think geometric art is ... I don't like to call it that. I don't think it's any more pure than pop art or anything else. It doesn't have anything to do with purity. — Donald Judd

I think some of the things I deal with Hopper probably has dealt with also, since it's somewhat the same environment and I have pretty strong reactions to what this country looks like. It looks pretty dull and spare, and you like this and dislike it and it's very complicated. — Donald Judd

I pay a lot of attention to how things are done and the whole activity of building something is interesting. — Donald Judd

If someone says it's art, it's art. — Donald Judd

Well, I think there are artists who are more or less contemporary with Hopper who are more relevant. — Donald Judd

But I think you have to - whatever the environment looks like, it does enter into people's art work one way or another; it's very remote or it isn't. It's remote in my work but it has to have a certain degree of ordinariness. — Donald Judd

Well, there's a morality in that you want your work to be good, I suppose. — Donald Judd

But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment. — Donald Judd

Design has to work. Art does not. — Donald Judd

Well, in any art there are a lot of technical things that you can get to like. — Donald Judd

The attitude and capacity of the factory, the old metal table and the new ideas of the wooden furniture quickly and naturally suggested the possibility of metal furniture. — Donald Judd

If a chair or a building is not functional ... it is ridiculous. — Donald Judd

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times. — Donald Judd

You're only dealing with whatever you know, which is a very small part of it and later on it'll look like it has something to do with the period. Obviously, the artists have something to do with one another. They tend to set up certain common qualities among themselves. — Donald Judd

Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface, — Donald Judd

Well, I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new. — Donald Judd

Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved away. — Donald Judd

I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality. — Donald Judd

In terms of existing, everything is equal. — Donald Judd

I recognize very much in Hopper that it does look like the United States; it looks like the 30's and my first impressions of everything, all of which I have to deal with and which gets mixed up in my work and probably gets mixed up in everybody else's work too. — Donald Judd

Building is just skilled labor, I suppose. It's a lot of work. I don't mind other people building them, but the way things go together and are made is interesting to me; I like that a lot. — Donald Judd