Donald Judd, Untitled, 1988, woodcut, 60 x 80cm., ed.25+10AP, this example is in the Fisher Collection at SFMOMA
I saw this Donald Judd woodcut on its own and was so shocked by its monochromeness I didn’t even recognize it. All I could see was the blue monochrome screenprint edition Derek Jarman may or may not have completed for the letterpress edition of the script for Blue.
I’d wrestled with trying to fix that only partially realized print by remaking it with the aspect ratio of the film, only to get stuck trying to figure out which version of the film to use. And maybe the Judd felt like a Jarman because it’s printed on 60 x 80 cm sheets, which is the same ratio of Jarman’s print—though his was apparently vertical—and which is also the same 4:3 aspect ratio of 1990s TV.
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1988, 10 woodblock prints, 60 x 80cm, ed. 25+10AP, this set from SFMOMA
But none of this, I think, is Judd’s concern at all. This woodcut was published by Brooke Alexander as part of a portfolio, and that’s how I’ve always only ever seen it. The series of ten prints indexes a rectangle cut by 0, 1 or 2 lines; horizontal or vertical; and positive or negative. The portfolio was made in three colors: cadmium red, blue, or ivory black, in editions of 25+10 aps (each).
But now in this context, it becomes hard to see the one solid print as anything other than a part of a series, the precursor state, the base, for the cuts to come.
The September 2020 zoom panel for Judd, MoMA’s mononymous Donald Judd retrospective is already a fascinating document of its moment. For a show that was closed for four months by COVID restrictions, there was much discussion of the people, and the physical experience of Judd’s work. Spatial qualities, social distancing, the reflectivity of its surfaces, the subjectivity of seeing one’s masked self seeing.
Rachel Harrison’s mesmerizing photos of details of the work and Leslie Hewitt’s discussion of how photogenic it is drew insights from curator Ann Temkin about how much she’s learned from watching visitors photograph the show, and how they’d debated whether it was safe to allow photos at all, and how much our relationship to photography has changed since even the last major Judd retrospective at Tate Modern in 2004. Harrison pointed out the historical shift in Judd photography, citing James Meyer’s catalogue essay, about Judd’s first show is documented by just two black & white installation photos by Rudy Burckhardt.
John Waters’ Visit Marfa, 2003, six-color screenprint by Globe Poster Co., 30 x 22 in., ed. 100, on the cover of the Summer 2004 issue of Artforum, as sold on eBay
Jeffrey Weiss’s last comment was to suggest Judd saw people–and museums— as things to be avoided, not courted, though, which is why he kind of withdrew to Marfa and set up his own spaces. When Temkin said we’ll end thinking of Marfa, Harrison piped up to say, how about John Waters instead? And his great poster, which she paraphrased fondly as, “Welcome to Marfa, the Disneyland of Minimalism,” inviting everyone at home to Google it.
It is actually, The Jonestown of Minimalism,” of course, but the misquote was a clue, probably, of what Harrison was reading up on for her Judd panel. Waters’ 2003 poster was on the cover of the Summer 2004 issue of Artforum, which was largely dedicated to the first major museum exhibitions historicizing Judd and Minimalism. It included articles by Temkin [on Judd conservation], Weiss [on artists’ writing], and Meyer [on scale]. Waters’ poster is the lede for a spectacularly grumpy review by Yve-Alain Bois of three museum shows—including Judd at Tate:
“Take the Whole Family to Marfa, Texas,” exhorts the broadside, beneath a Li’l Abner–style middle-class family, grinning like they’ve just won a vacation to Disney World. A bubble on the poster advertises “The Jonestown of Minimalism,” mocking the tenacious cliché of the movement’s “spirituality” by likening it to a senseless sect.
Bois’ review, the whole issue really, including the lengthy back & forths in the letters, reads very much as of its moment, when the entire art world was talking to itself in the magazine of record [sic * 3 obv]. When I’d go back and read my blog posts from the early 2000s, I used to think my self-referentiality and -importance was insufferable, but now I realize I was soaking in it. It really did be like that sometimes.
So some art world things and faces are the same, but what’s changed? For one, you actually can fly to Marfa now—and some of us [sic] did. In April 2020, the early freakout days of the COVID shutdown, Nate Freeman reported that a private jet flew from Teterboro to Marfa with three passengers. Who quarantined at addresses of the Chinati Foundation, and a studio compound owned by Christopher Wool & Charline von Heyl.
But I think the most salient—and terrifying—development is revealed in Harrison’s prescient malapropism. Does anything capture our dire cultural moment more clearly than the conflation of Disney World and Jonestown?
installation view of Furniture Designed by Artists, with Marc di Suvero’s swing hanging in the center of Leo Castelli Gallery, Sept. 1972, photo: James Patrick via LCG Archives at AAA
TWOMBLY FURNITURE?? CLICK TO OPEN! Yeah so far, nothing, and the Warhol might be a Campbell’s Soup print on the wall. [Yeah, no, there is a typical Castelli invite for the show on ebay that lists six furniture artists: Chamberlain, Di Suvero, Judd, Lalanne, Rauschenberg, Charles Ross, and Gus Spear. Maybe everyone else was just art artists.]
installation view of Lalanne’s Sardine Bed, 1972, at Furniture Designed by Artists, Leo Castelli Gallery, Sept. 1972, photo: James Patrick via LCG Archives at AAA
But if I hadn’t clicked, I’d have definitely kept missing this Lalanne Sardine Bed. Which was a one-off, commissioned by the show’s organizer, Jane Holzer, of the Warhol Factory Jane Holzers, who at 31, had rebooted herself as an impresaria. Leo Castelli was apparently involved in her artist furniture startup Daedalus Concepts, which, except for the Times puff piece for this show, exists only in the provenance listings of of various John Chamberlain sofas.
Cindy Sherman Madame Pompadour Soup Tureen & Platter, 1990, ed. 25 for each of four colors, with Rose being the best, selling 26 Feb 2025 at Christies
In addition to being the art world’s second-greatest tureen, her Sevres porcelain soup tureen with her self-portrait on the side as Madame Pompadour (née Poisson) is Cindy Sherman’s second-greatest work. It has a perfect harmony of content, context, image, and medium that made the Untitled Film Stills so lastingly powerful.
Cindy Sherman 30-piece dinner service, 21-piece breakfast/tea service, each in an edition of 75 in each of four colors, with Rose, again, being the best.
The only thing to improve it would be setting it among the complete Limoges dinner set and the tea & breakfast set Sherman produced with Artes Magnus in 1990, in the sclerotic culture of Reagan/Bush, and then to sell it into the darkening maw of our burgeoning technomonarchist oligarchy.
I have no doubt the successful buyer will track down whoever lost the lid to the sugar bowl and have them audited, chained to the floor of a LC130, and shipped off to GTMO before the Christie’s wire transfer even clears. February 26 is coming.
Behold, Joseph Kosuth’s Marcel Duchamp: In Advance of A Broken Arm (Fourth Version), 1915/1964, ed. 1/8, published by Galleria Arturo Schwarz, Milan, being sold in November 2024 at Christie’s
We have some idea about the 17 urinals—17 or so, I haven’t kept up. But where are Marcel Duchamp’s shovels? Arturo Schwarz produced editions of eight replicas of 14 Duchamp readymades in 1964, originally offered in a complete set for $25,000. Were there really only eight? In Advance of a Broken Arm (Schwarz, 1964) is listed as the fourth version. Where are the previous ones?
I think there are 16 shovels to account for. 12 exist; 2 are exhibition copies; and 2 are lost. Here they are in roughly chronological order [of where they ended up]:
if that stall door is 46 in., those chairs are 23 in., but actual Judd chairs are 30 in., so… image: Kevin Bobolsky Group
I am not going to engage in the Tadao Ando weirdness going on all over California, of which Ian Parker’s New Yorker article focuses only on the most ridiculous and collapsing epicenter. But it all did make me look again at Ando’s work for Tom Ford’s ranch outside Santa Fe.
Which, it turns out after Ford sold the 20,000-acre ranch with the Ando house, horse barn, and indoor & outdoor riding arenas in 2021, the buyer put it back on the market in 2022. It’s still for sale. [update: I don’t think this arc is correct. Many reports that the ranch, put up for sale in 2016, pricechopped in 2019, and sold in 2021, but the Tom Ford ranch Fred Haas put up for sale in 2022 is another one, a house built on 1,000 acres that once belonged to Ford. And yet Bobolsky still has the Ando ranch looking like it’s available.]
But none of that is as important as the Juddy little stools outside each of the horse stalls. If plywood KimK’s Jurd chairs were too plywood and janky, these seem too thick and pristine. Plus, I think the dimensions are off. The filename on the realtor’s site is still “TF-Ranch,” but what are they, and who made them?
If I had a nickel for every artist documentary made from well within the circle of subjectivity that caught me off guard with the nuances of the artist’s funerary arrangements, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s wild that it’s happened twice.
In 2007 Rainer Judd and Karen Bernstein co-directed Marfa Voices, a documentary about Donald Judd’s life and work in west Texas that emerged from the Judd Foundation’s Oral History Project. Among those who shared their stories were friends and colleagues who attended Judd’s funeral up Pinto Canyon in 1994, including the bagpiper, Joe Brady, Jr.
It probably could go without saying that Judd was buried in the most pristine of pine boxes, but it is remarkable to actually see it nonetheless.
Tobias Wong, Glass Chairs Nos. 2 & 1, 2002, exhibition copies, Low-iron glass, UV glue, installed at Museum of Vancouver in 2022-23. image: MOV
This morning on the good social media, Kevin Buist mentioned that the Museum of Vancouver had a Tobias Wong exhibition last year. All We Want Is More ran from November 2022 thru July 2023. Obviously, I missed it, but there is a virtual tour, and I had to stop and post this, because the first thing you see is Glass Chairs Nos. 1 and 2 in a plexiglass box.
The wall text notes that Wong’s appropriations of other people’s works—in this case, Donald Judd’s 84 chairs—”were not always welcomed or understood and provoked heated conversations about notions of authorship.” Also, because he “had always found Judd’s chairs uncomfortable,” Wong made his chairs “slightly higher.”
The label for the chairs reads: “Initially prototyped in 2002 for the now defunct, New York-based T for Troy [sic?], in 2004 Glass Chairs nos. 1 and 2 went into production with Twentieth, a high-end design store based in Los Angeles. Twentieth granted MOV a one-time license to reproduce the chairs using Wong’s design specifications. “
This is an unusual piece of information for a wall text, but they also have a making-of video that shouts out the mount maker, so maybe that’s just how MOV rolls. What’s important is, rather than borrow some, someone at MOV just ordered some glass and glued these chairs together.
Tobias Wong Glass Chair No. 2, I think, produced by Twentieth and sold by LA Modern in 2023
Not to provoke heated conversations about notions of authorship, but Judd’s chairs are 30 x 15 x 15 inches, and Wong’s chairs are 31 1/2 inches tall and 16 inches wide, and the glass is 3/4-inch thick. Which means if the seat is 16 inches square, the shelf underneath—the chair with the shelf is No. 2—is 16W x 15 1/4 D. Whether there is two pieces on the side [No. 1] or one piece on the front [No. 2], the other vertical glass pieces are 19 x 16 inches, and they are set under the seat.
Here is an 8-minute YouTube video on how to make a glass display case with the Bohle UV bonding system. It looks just like the chair! Why not try it at home today?
These Donald Judd Tables, a screencap from youtube by the New York Times
The Judd Foundation has filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit against Kim Kardashian and Clemens Design, LA, for claiming in a video that tables and chairs in Kardashian’s office are the works of Donald Judd. Zachary Small broke the story for the NY Times:
“It is simply not true that Clements Design commissioned imitation Donald Judd tables,” wrote [Kardashian’s] lawyer, John Ulin, to the foundation, adding that the wood type and overall proportions were different. “They are different tables with different designs.”
But the foundation pointed to an invoice from Clements Design in which it described the furniture as “in the style of Donald Judd” and included an image owned by the Judd Foundation of the authentic dining set.
Indeed, the furniture Kardashian had copied, examples of which are at the Arena at Chinati and in the 2nd floor of 101 Spring Street, are made of 2-by pine board, which determines the dimensions. The copies are in plywood, which is not one of the 13 wood options for the authentic table.
“These Donald Judd tables”: Screenshot from Kim Kardashian’s YouTube, from the Judd Foundation complaint filed 27 Mar 2024
Like with Gwyneth with her fake Ruth Asawas, it really makes you wonder why people don’t just spend the few hundred thousand dollars to get the real thing.
[UPDATE: It’s because then she couldn’t use Judd’s name and designs for her own marketing clout. She literally cited Judd alongside collaborator/partner/employees Rick Owens & his wife Michele and Vanessa Beecroft, and then claimed her knockoffs were real. If it had been real Judd furniture, purchased through the same gallery, Salon94, where she got her Rick Owens, she would have had to agree to not use Judd’s names or objects in ad, promo, or marketing. If she’d accepted the foundation’s offer to replace the fakes with real furniture *at a discount* she couldn’t have used her office—explicitly designed to look like Chinati—for her content. Which defeats her entire point.]
If only she’d left it on the moodboard: screenshot from JF complaint comparing a widely published photo of the Arena at the Chinati Foundation and its two Judd table&chair installation with a screenshot from kimk’s video showing Clements Design knocked off the space, not just the furniture, and then kimk claimed it was real.
[UPDATE: Obviously I need someone who downloaded the video—oh hey it’s on the Internet Archive, thanks, Chris!—before it went private to send it to me. Also, why is the case—2:24-cv-02496, in the California Central District—not on PACER? Oh nvm, it is now. Perfect screenshots added.]
El Taller Chihuahuense, Donald Judd’s metal fabrication shop in Marfa, as published in Donald Judd Raume/Spaces, 1994, from the Museum Wiesbaden, all photos: Todd Eberle
After several years of executing works in Cor-Ten steel, Donald Judd opened a welding and fabrication shop in 1988 in the disused Ice Plant building on the northeast side of downtown Marfa. He called it El Taller Chihuahuense (The Chihuahuan Workshop), and he hired local welders, including Raul Hernandez and Lee Donaldson to make his works.
Cobb Gatehouse with Judd steel bed and table by, as published in Donald Judd Raume/Spaces
The workers of El Taller also fabricated beds and slate-topped tables of square tubular steel, which Judd designed in 1991 and 1992.
four of the eight sterling silver pieces in the Donald Judd dinner service, by Puiforcat
Saw the Donald Judd X Puiforcat silver dinnerware again on wildoute’s tumblr this morning and was reminded I’m apparently not living in a way that it will effortlessly cross my path. I will have to seek it out at the Hermès store [or the Judd Foundation?]
Donald Judd dinnerware, with other Puiforcat photobomb, at 101 Spring, from tiktok/graciewiener
Technically it dropped last spring. From this hilarious tiktokker [“also the building’s beautiful”] and the Vogue piece, it looks like the embargo for the fashion/influencer reveal at 101 Spring lifted on May 15th. But it kept getting announced/discovered through the fall. And the making of video on Puiforcat’s own page for the collection is only a month old. Anyway, I think you can no longer use the excuse that it wasn’t available.
Lot 653, 11 Dec 2007 at Wright20, sold for $12,000
Speaking of Donald Judd chairs, a copper armchair was ordered, and produced by Lehni in 2006. It was sold at auction for some reason in 2007. It was sold at auction again in 2011. It is now, in 2023, up for sale again.
Lot 216, 27 June 2011 at Wright20, sold for $10,625
The copper armchair is sort of the archetypal piece of Judd furniture. In a project about seriality and variation, it is a single statement chair. And in its relatively brief, 16-year existence, this single chair has clearly seen some stuff.
Lot 145, 18 July 2023 at LA Modern, current bid: $6,000 [update: it sold for $15,720]
In 2007, it looked pristine, practically new. In 2011, it had clearly been polished for sale. And in 2023, wow, dawg, you live like this? Beyond the overall patina, which is substantial, there are two holes [?], vertically aligned, on one side where, I don’t even know what; they seem too low for a cupholder?
Speaking of gorgeous patina: Donald Judd, Untitled, 1972, image via Sprueth-Magers
I was trying to remember where I got the idea that Judd insisted that his metal objects, particularly his bronze and copper works, be either perfectly maintained or left undisturbed to accrue the physical rewards of the passage of time. So I googled it, and it turns out I was told that by a Judd person, and I’d blogged about it 10 years ago when bronze kitchens were a thing.
And so it is that this one, exceptional chair is in perfect harmony with its creator’s intent, and it is also able to tell its own thrice-flipped material story, while reminding me of my own.
I think the first place Tobias Wong’s Glass Chairs were available was in 2002 at Troy. The SoHo design store commissioned Wong to make a holiday collection. I love them, they’re like Judd chairs for ghosts.
Tobi was always getting in trouble for his knockoffs and reworkings, but more than 20 years later, and 13 years after his death, these chairs are actually still available. So I guess the ghost of Judd doesn’t mind. [Troy was literally across the street from Peter Ballantine’s place, the guy who made Judd’s plywood pieces—but not the chairs.]
At Troy they were sold as a pair, as Chair No. 1 and No. 2, but the picture from the NY Times, and the one on Twentieth, the LA design shop who sold this one, are flipped. So if you want to complete the set, be sure to confirm which $9000 chair you’re ordering.
A real thing of beauty: Lot 107, Donald Judd, rare galvanized steel armchair, est. $60-80k at Wright20
I knocked off Donald Judd because I had to; there was no such thing as a Judd Crib. Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, meanwhile, knocked off Donald Judd because they could. By acquiring an extremely rare 1 of 2 Judd armchair in galvanized steel directly from the artist in life, they generated an auratic bubble where fabricating your own Douglas Fir ply chairs was apparently preferable to buying estate editions. Which, in 2010, were fully available, btw.
[few days later update: whoops. they’re gone.]
Lot 111 in the third Boyd sale at Wright20: two After Donald Judd chairs in Douglas fir ply, est. $2-3,000
