Artists on Artists Spotlight: Amie Siegel on Donald Judd
By Matilde Guidelli Guidi
Assistant Curator, Dia Art Foundation
In this series, we revisit works from Dia’s Artists on Artists Lecture Series. Established in 2001, these lectures highlight the work of contemporary artists from the perspective of their colleagues and peers. Artists are invited to give informal lectures, talks, or other presentations focused on a single artist represented in Dia’s permanent collection, exhibitions, or programming. Developed in the spirit of Dia’s mission, the series is motivated both by an in-depth focus on individual artists and a drive to facilitate new ideas and discourse across disciplines and generations. Dia has recorded all public programs for the last twenty years and the full archive is available in the Watch & Listen section on the website.
For New Yorkers, among the rippling consequences of the pandemic is a spring without Donald Judd. Long awaited, his first retrospective in thirty years was on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for only two weeks before all museums closed. Six corollary shows organized in the greater New York area are also patiently awaiting reopening once the emergency wanes. At Dia Beacon, we joined the Judd celebrations with a focused selection of his iconic plywood pieces from the 1970s, which collectively exemplify the artist’s ability to produce exquisitely complex works by combining essential geometry and common industrial materials.
When we think of Judd, “Specific Objects” comes to mind. In this 1965 essay, a young Judd takes account of new three-dimensional artworks that are neither painting nor sculpture, but rather “specific objects” that share the space of the viewer, intentionally blank and vacated of authorial subjectivity. Against illusionism and anthropomorphism, Judd calls for the use of industrial materials to create large, serial, hollow volumes. A manifesto of sorts, “Specific Objects” set the stage for Judd’s own practice, which is characterized by a basic vocabulary of materials and forms. These include simple geometric boxes placed directly on the floor or spaced evenly along the wall, engaging viewers in a bodily experience that happens in real time and space.
And yet, Amie Siegel asks in this brilliant Artists on Artists Lecture, how specific are Judd’s objects? Taking furniture as a point of entry into Judd’s universe, Siegel reveals that the artist most closely associated with the pared down aesthetics of Minimalism is in fact a “maximalist”—an eclectic collector of disparate things, objects, and textures that aroused his singular desire.
The lecture begins in a basement real and fictional, with a chair and its function, however perverted, in the context of art. Comparing the five floors of his studio and residence at 101 Spring Street in SoHo to a massive vitrine, Siegel assembles an anthropological portrait of Judd through the objects with which he populated his vast ecosystem. These include not only his serial production but also his assiduous buying of buildings, furniture, tools, and artifacts from around the world. By the mid-1960s, Judd proclaimed that European art was over and done with, yet he yearned for European Modernism all his life. He advocated for blurring medium specificity, yet he continuously compartmentalized the disparate facets of his practice as well as his living spaces. With significant wit and research, Siegel exposes Judd’s contradictions through contextualization, seriality, and the relativity of functionalism.
Uniquely intelligent and entertaining, Siegel’s lecture typifies the ethos of Dia’s Artists on Artists Lecture series, which encourages critical dialogue among artists. Follow Siegel into the Q & A section, where she recounts how she decided to investigate Judd despite not initially feeling an aesthetic affinity with the artist. Her critical approach to Judd’s persona and practice reveal a complex portrait of the artist—one that Siegel ends up relating to.
