LETTERS
Sirs:
Don Judd is a good sculptor. Why he should want to claim “baseless” sculpture as completely his idea is beyond me.
The base, pedestal, or whatever one wishes to call it, has had a comparatively long history throughout the ages in which men and women have been making objects to be looked at.
I’ve found little use for this device since I began exploring open form sculpture in 1958. I’ve not observed its extensive use in the works of Andre, Chamberlain, di Suvero, Doyle, Forakis, Montgomery, Sugarman, Weinrib, and others since that time, which preceded Don Judd’s images moving onto the floor.
If, as Judd says, the use of polychrome was “one of those big fake challenges which I could take for granted,” then why build a pedestal of importance around the elimination of the sculpture base?
—Chuck Ginnever
Putney, Vermont
Sirs:
Donald Judd’s response to John Coplan’s assertion that Judd, like Mondrian, composes was, “I know I’m doing something with the form, but I wouldn’t call it composition because I hate the term.” (Artforum, June, 1971.)
Putting aside the questions of why one needs to hate a word and whether that declared hatred is simply a stance that sounds good in the esthetic of the moment, the reader wonders what the difference is between a piece by Mr. Judd and a hypothetical piece exactly like it, but made by another artist and ordered “part by part visually.” Is the observer expected to perceive each of them in a different way? How important is his knowledge of the artist’s mental process?
If what Mr. Judd is seeking is abdication of agency, his effort is rather limited. Why be self righteous about avoiding composition in sculpture if one has already chosen materials, colors, and basic dimensions? Although we have allowed composition to become a bogey there is nothing morally, esthetically, or art-historically superior in having it or not. New sensibilities complement, not invalidate, former ones. Judd doesn’t mind observers thinking there’s some scheme to his piece as long as they don’t understand how it works or think he hit upon it step by step, and he doesn’t mind having his pieces look ordered as long as he can fudge on the word composition. Parts sometimes will relate in spite of all theory. Nothing will necessarily prevent people from making visual associations within a work that is, after all, meant to be seen.
Mr. Judd’s infatuation with the “one shot” method is as hard to take as his nebulous “doing something” that isn’t composition. One can imagine a traditional figurative piece, say a standing nude, conceived all at once and executed with scrupulous regard to the original vision. One can also imagine a contemporary of ours who first decides to use some system for ordering the parts of his piece, then decides that the system should be a numerical one, then decides that perhaps the Fibonnaci series would be a good one, then selects a certain finite subset of that particular series . . . hardly a one shot business even though the finished work may meet Mr. Judd’s standards. Moreover, since a competent mathematician can write an algorithm that will generate any finite string of numbers as a series, any progression has an underlying mathematical scheme, whether that progression was arrived at visually, by chance, by random numbers, or whatever. That some schemes are simpler than others may count for something, but not if Mr. Judd is as interested as he claims in the observer’s not understanding yet somehow responding to the order that confronts him.
—Joseph Gabe Berkeley,
California
Sirs:
Within Artforum’s May, 1971, issue, Kasha Linville credits me with persuading Jo Baer from destroying most of a series of “1962–1963” paintings of hers “after they encountered considerable hostility when they were first shown in 1964.” What a charming tale! But, although I’ll inevitably depreciate myself in further writing, I must deny performing such a saving in whole or in part. Briefly, my remembrance informs me that while considering preparing an exposition of some new artists’ emanations for the Kaymar Gallery in New York for April, 1964, Don Judd, who was supposed to help me considerably with selection but married instead, asked me to meet Jo and her husband, Jack Wesley, to examine some of her recent paintings for inclusion of one. I liked the paintings almost immediately, even more than Don did and chose the one deliberatively. When the exposition was ready, I concluded that Jo’s painting was one of the most engaging efforts. Other contributors to the small exposition were already reputable, or soon to become so, artists such as Frank Stella, Larry Poons (represented reluctantly by a kind of spare, rhythmic diagrammatic plotting on graph paper, apparently none of which procedure had been made public previously) Don Judd, and such little known or relatively neglected artists as Sol LeWitt, Darby Bannard, Bobby Ryman, Leo Valledor, Ward Jackson and another artist whose name I can’t recall now. Also, my wife asked that I include something. (Or something like that or not at all happened.) I don’t remember Jo’s painting being spoken for or against in noteworthy language. Not much controversy. I do remember that Jo wanted gallery representation for her paintings; therefore, I asked Dick Bellamy to expose them in his Green Gallery. Somehow, he never did and I felt frustrated in that failure. But Jo and Dick have seemingly satisfactorily cooperated through his office in Noah Goldowsky’s Gallery for several years.
—Dan Flavin Garrison,
New York
Sirs:
The review of the Sanford Gifford exhibition (Hirschl and Adler Galleries) by Jerrold Lanes in your May issue reveals the damage done by critics who insist on comparing second generation practitioners of a movement to the innovators of that movement. Individual achievement is thereby sacrificed,and the artist emerges as a mere diluter of the master’s works and ideas. Such is the fate of Sanford Gifford. He is castigated by Mr. Lanes for his failure to conform to the ideology of Thomas Cole—for his failure to invest his landscapes with historical and literary associations. To fully understand Gifford’s achievement he must be criticized on his own terms—not on those of Cole or Church, whose aims are obviously antithetical to his own.
As my forthcoming thesis on the artist will demonstrate, it is precisely Gifford’s refusal to be anchored by literary and historical associations which leads him to an esthetic which projects beyond his own time. His career is a gradual distillation, a process verging upon a new ideology based on the autonomy of formal relationships. His art therefore cannot be dismissed as a travesty of the art of Kensett, who never transcends the nature orientation of the Hudson River School; nor as a weakened version of the early Winslow Homer, whose basic concerns rarely go beyond those of genre. Instead, Gifford’s esthetic is related to that of Whistler, whose overriding concern with “art for art’s sake” makes explicit Gifford’s subtle implications.
—Barbara B. Zabel
Austin, Texas
Sirs:
I don’t happen to use photographs myself in connection with my paintings so Rosalind E. Krauss’ fuzzy discussion of my paintings at the Corcoran Biennial is definitely out of focus.
—Philip Pearlstein
New York City
