Donald Judd: Getting Rid of Illusionism

Donald Judd - Untitled - 1963 - Oil on wood with Plexiglas - 49.5 x 123.2 x 123.2 cm (19 1/2 x 48 1/2 x 48 1/2 in.) - National Gallery of Art - Washington, D.C.American artist Donald Judd’s (1928-1994) rejection of both traditional painting and sculpture led him to a conception of art built upon the idea of the object as it exists in the environment. Judd's works belong to the Minimalist movement, whose goal was to rid art of the Abstract Expressionists' reliance on the self-referential trace of the artist, in order to form pieces that were free from emotion. The credo of Minimalism is, “it is what it is”.

Judd and other Minimalists created works comprised of single or repeated geometric forms produced from industrialized, machine-made materials that eschewed the artist's touch. Judd's geometric and modular creations have often been criticized for a seeming lack of content; it is this simplicity, however, that calls into question the nature of art, and becomes art itself.