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Keywords:

3D works

​Specific Objects

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Specific Objects

Donald Judd

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In this passage, Judd gave a specific introduction to a new kind of artwork, which is neither sculpture nor painting. He called them the new three-dimensional work. He started by stating the background of these new 3D works and their connection with painting and sculpture.

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Special qualities of 3D works：

1. Three-dimensionality is not as near to being simply a container as painting and sculpture have seemed to be. It opens to everything because there is no rule at all.

2. It’s not like a movement: anyway, movements no longer work: also, linear history has unravelled somewhat.

3. It will probably change painting and sculpture.

4. Its materials are somewhat more emphasized than before. The parts and the space are allusive, descriptive and somewhat naturalistic. 

5. The new 3D works are opened and extended, more or less environmental.

6.Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors – which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art

7.In the three-dimensional work the whole thing is made according to complex purposes, and these are not scattered but asserted by one form. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. 

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"The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall. A rectangle is a shape itself; it is obviously the whole shape; it determines and limits the arrangement of whatever is on or inside of it."(Donald Jadd,1965)

 

"Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another."(Donald Jadd,1965)

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This essay was written in 1965. Before the concept of installation existed, the 3D works he mentioned were the artist's first attempts at installation. However, these attempts were mainly in the visual and formal realm, aimed at challenging and reflecting on traditional European sculptural and pictorial forms. In the context of contemporary art, found objects are more widely used. Unlike the 3D works mentioned by the author, contemporary installations are no longer concerned with what genre the work belongs to, nor are they interested in challenging traditional painting and sculpture. They focus on personal narratives (Julie Maurin's work below). Thus, the material or found objects no longer serve the form but plays a role in the artist's personal narrative. The meaning or function of the material/object itself is deconstructed. The object participates in the narrative in its original form.
 

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Related Artist

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Fee Kleiß

Enzo Cucchi

Martin Soto Climent

Ravi Jackson

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Books and resources

Thomas Kellein, Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955-1968, New York: D.A.P., 2002. Originally published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965.

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