MTU Library Catalogue

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Donald Judd / David Raskin.

By: Raskin, David, 1968- [author].
Contributor(s): Judd, Donald, 1928-1994 [contributor].
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, [2010]Description: 196 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 28 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9780300162769; 0300162766.Other title: Art, principles, and activism.Subject(s): Judd, Donald, 1928-1994 -- Criticism and interpretationDDC classification: 709.2 JUD
Contents:
Art's scale -- Credible art -- Disparity is a method -- Citizen Judd -- Physics and fantasy.
Summary: Raskin traces Judd's principles from his beginnings as an art critic through his installations and designs in Mara, Texas. He discusses Judd's important paintings and idiosyncratic red pieces, as well as the three-dimensional works that are celebrated worldwide. He also examines Judd's commitment to empirical values and his political activism, and concludes with by considering the importance of Judd's example for recent art. We are shown an artist with spare designs, who found spiritual values in plywood, Plexiglass, and industrial production, who did not distinguish between thinking and feeling, asserting that science marked the limits of knowledge, who argued his art provided intutions of morality and who worked for political causes that were neither left nor right.--Publisher.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 709.2 JUD (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00229552
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This pioneering book, the first monograph devoted to Donald Judd, addresses the whole breadth of Judd's practices. Drawing on documents found in nearly twenty archives, David Raskin explains why some of Judd's works of art seem startlingly ephemeral while others remain insistently physical. In the process of answering this previously perplexing question, Raskin traces Judd's principles from his beginnings as an art critic through his fabulous installations and designs in Marfa, Texas. He discusses Judd's early important paintings and idiosyncratic red objects, as well as the three-dimensional works that are celebrated throughout the world. He also examines Judd's commitment to empirical values and his political activism, and concludes by considering the importance of Judd's example for recent art.

Ultimately, Raskin develops a picture of Judd as never before seen: he shows us an artist who asserted his individuality with spare designs; who found spiritual values in plywood, Plexiglas, and industrial production; who refused to distinguish between thinking and feeling while asserting that science marked the limits of knowled≥ who claimed that his art provided intuitions of morality but not a specific set of tenets; and who worked for political causes that were neither left nor right.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Art's scale -- Credible art -- Disparity is a method -- Citizen Judd -- Physics and fantasy.

Raskin traces Judd's principles from his beginnings as an art critic through his installations and designs in Mara, Texas. He discusses Judd's important paintings and idiosyncratic red pieces, as well as the three-dimensional works that are celebrated worldwide. He also examines Judd's commitment to empirical values and his political activism, and concludes with by considering the importance of Judd's example for recent art. We are shown an artist with spare designs, who found spiritual values in plywood, Plexiglass, and industrial production, who did not distinguish between thinking and feeling, asserting that science marked the limits of knowledge, who argued his art provided intutions of morality and who worked for political causes that were neither left nor right.--Publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this first monograph based on documents found in nearly 20 archives as well as considerable research in art, criticism, aesthetics, politics, and ethics, Raskin (chair; art history, theory, & criticism; Sch. of the Art Inst. of Chicago) provides an authoritative, comprehensive guide to the works and practices of American minimalist painter, sculptor, and critic Donald Judd (1928-94). Raskin argues that previous analyses fall short because they interpret Judd's works and practices in reductive and theoretical terms that fail to acknowledge the importance of reality. The author grounds his study in materialism and empiricism, drawing attention to the vitality, openness, and indeterminateness of Judd's output. Raskin develops an expanded notion of scale, proposing that Judd's art produces local order without a framework surrounding creative experience. VERDICT Referencing Judd's writings, interviews, and works as well as those of many art critics, philosophers, scholars, and artists, this generously illustrated book (60 color and 80 monochrome reproductions) featuring creations by Judd and many contemporary artists is well documented, nicely presented, and intellectually stimulating, if not challenging. Of interest to students, scholars, museum professionals, and others.-Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

The terse title of this monograph on minimalist Donald Judd gives no hint of the complexity of the book's content, just as Judd's work, often characterized as epitomizing the reduction of art to material fact, does not immediately bring to mind the kind of conceptually sophisticated interpretations that author Raskin (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) offers. Adopting the premise that values and facts (in particular the fact of scale) are inextricable, Raskin convincingly counters well-established ideas about Judd's art, and minimalism in general, that first circulated in the 1960s in the writings of Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss. In addition to providing in-depth analysis of Judd's quintessential work as an artist and critic, Raskin delves into the less-discussed topics of the artist's early paintings and his environmental and political activism. Details of the artist's life find their way into the text only when necessary to elucidate works and ideas, so this book should not be mistaken for a biography. Packing references to 15 philosophers, 9 critics, and 34 artists into the five-page introduction alone, Raskin's monograph is a dense critical commentary on an artist whose work is due for precisely this kind of revisiting. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above. G. R. Brown Kansas State University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

David Raskin is professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.