Donald Judd, Untitled, 1985, Enameled aluminum, 11 13/16 by 70 7/8 by 11 13/16 Inches, from the collection of Allison and Warren Kanders; copyright Judd Foundation; Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.
In the ’60s, Donald Judd began making his famous “stacks,” “boxes,” and “progressions”—cubes, boxes, and prisms manufactured from industrial stuff like concrete and plywood. A 1968 series, “Large Stack,” hanging at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, comprises stainless-steel boxes framing orange plexiglass panes, affixed to the wall in exact intervals, precise as science. But it’s not just dispassionate geometry; the sleekness of the metal, juxtaposed with the soft amber light thrown on the wall, is sublime.
Though he’s known for using one or two colors, Judd began using six to eight in every piece in spring 1984, a practice he continued through 1992. Using the 100-plus colors in the RAL industrial paint chart, he categorized “full colors, or acidy colors, or sharp colors, or oxide colors, or whitish colors, and so on and so on,” explains curator Marianne Stockebrand. He then used this system to be sure that, as he wrote, “all of the colors were present at once.” These pieces have shown individually (one is on loan from the Museum of Modern Art), but this is the first show dedicated to this period of Judd’s career. It also includes working notes and drawings, such as collages cut from the RAL chart, that have never been publicly shown.
“Ultimately, what I think he was trying to do, and which he had done in so many of his previous works, was to avoid any hierarchy,” Stockebrand says. “There isn’t any particular color or color combination that he valued higher than another one.”
“Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works” opens May 10 and runs through January 4. On May 11, The Pulitzer hosts a Q&A with Stockebrand and Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes at 11 a.m. The museum is located at 3716 Washington; hours are Noon–5 p.m. Wed, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Sat. For more information, call 314-754-1850 or go to pulitzerarts.org.
