Donald Judd quotes

Donald Judd (1928-1994) was an influential American artist known for his minimalist sculptures and contributions to the art movement. Born in Missouri, Judd's work revolutionized the art world with his emphasis on simplicity, geometric shapes, and industrial materials. He believed in the purity of form and rejected the traditional notion of art as representation. Judd's sculptures, often composed of meticulously arranged boxes or stacks, challenged viewers' perception of space and their relationship with the artwork. His works can be found in renowned museums worldwide, including the Judd Foundation in New York City. Discover more about Donald Judd's artistic legacy and his significant impact on modern art.

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

- Donald Judd

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

- 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

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

- 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

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

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

- Donald Judd

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

- Donald Judd

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

- Donald Judd

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

- 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

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

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

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

Pollock looks unusual and radical even now.

- 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

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

- 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

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

- Donald Judd

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

- 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

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

- 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

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

- Donald Judd

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

- Donald Judd

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

- Donald Judd

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

- Donald Judd