22 quotes
Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again.
Donald Judd (1987)
The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in art are certainly not always formal ones.
Donald Judd (1963)
Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture.
The new work obviously resembles sculpture more than it does painting, but it is nearer to painting.
The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness and scale as a chair.
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.
Donald Judd (1967)
Everything sculpture has, my work doesn’t.
Donald Judd (1967)
A painting by Newman is finally no simpler than one by Cezanne.
A work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be. Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.
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.
in: American Dialog, Vol. 1-5 (1964)
Since I leapt into the world an empiricist, ideality was not a quality I wanted.
Donald Judd in Art Journal (1981)
A work needs only to be interesting.
Material, space, and color are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material that can be picked up and sold, but no one sees space and color. Two of the main aspects of art are invisible; the basic nature of art is invisible.
Artforum International. Vol. 32 (1994)
I object very much when my work is said to not be political, because my feelings about the social system are in there somewhere. The idea is to have it all in there together—you can’t pull it out.
I'm not arguing, incidentally, for a confusion of art and architecture, a fashion now, but for a coherent relationship. Therefore, within the capacity of one person or of a small group, the relationship of all visible things should be considered.
I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.
At that second exhibition I had to peer into them and look through the grayed color and wonder what it would be like not gray and then wonder what the forms would be like not crabbed by the figures and trees.
Donald Judd (1974)
The furniture is comfortable to me. Rather than making a chair to sleep in or a machine to live it, it is better to make a bed. A straight chair is best for eating or writing. The third position is standing.
The history of art and art’s condition at any time are pretty messy. They should stay that way. One can think about them as much as one likes, but they won’t become neater; neatness isn’t even a very good reason for thinking about them. A lot of things just can’t be connected.
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. Some work is too large, complex and expensive to move. 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 (1987)