Donald Judd Quotes

• It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful.

  Donald Judd

  Powerful, Interesting, Quality

  Donald Judd, Thomas Kellein (2002). “Donald Judd: 1955-1968”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  57 Copy quote

• Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Powerful, Space

  Donald Judd (2005). “Complete Writings 1959-1975: Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports, Statements, Complaints”, Halifax, N.S. : Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design

  80 Copy quote

• Design has to work. Art does not.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Design, Doe

  35 Copy quote

• If someone says it's art, it's art.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Ifs

  25 Copy quote

• Art and architecture - all the arts - do not have to exist in isolation.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Architecture, Isolation

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  33 Copy quote

• You’re getting rid of the things that people used to think were essential to art. But that reduction is only incidental. I object to the whole reduction idea…if my work is reductionist it’s because it doesn’t have the elements that people thought should be there. But it has other elements I like.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Thinking, Ideas

  24 Copy quote

• In terms of existing, everything is equal.

  Donald Judd

  Equal, Term

  23 Copy quote

• Color, to continue had to occur in space.

  Donald Judd

  Color, Space

  26 Copy quote

• If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.

  Donald Judd

  Ridiculous, Building, Chairs

  "Donald Judd furniture: retrospective".

  16 Copy quote

• Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Essence, Mixing

  American Dialog Vol. 1-5, p.9, 1964.

  26 Copy quote

• I pay a lot of attention to how things are done and the whole activity of building something is interesting.

  Donald Judd

  Interesting, Attention, Done

  "Oral history interview with Donald Judd" by Bruce Hooton, www.aaa.si.edu. February 3, 1965.

  33 Copy quote

• Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved away.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Should, Moved

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  15 Copy quote

• The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Taken, Past

  33 Copy quote

• It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Should, Deals

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  15 Copy quote

• Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Example, Were Meant To Be

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  16 Copy quote

• I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Thinking, Denial

  "Oral history interview with Donald Judd" by Bruce Hooton, www.aaa.si.edu. February 3, 1965.

  16 Copy quote

• Well, in any art there are a lot of technical things that you can get to like.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Wells

  11 Copy quote

• The attitude and capacity of the factory, the old metal table and the new ideas of the wooden furniture quickly and naturally suggested the possibility of metal furniture.

  Donald Judd

  Attitude, Ideas, Tables

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  15 Copy quote

• Well, there's a morality in that you want your work to be good, I suppose.

  Donald Judd

  Want, Morality, Be Good

  11 Copy quote

• Pollock looks unusual and radical even now.

  Donald Judd

  Looks, Unusual, Radical

  12 Copy quote

• In the summer there are twelve cottonwoods around the pool, which in the winter become an elevated thicket. There is also a courtyard with a small garden of plants that stay green all year. The winter is bleak. This place is primarily for the installation of art, necessarily for whatever architecture of my own that can be included in an existing situation, for work, and altogether for my idea of living.

  Donald Judd

  Summer, Art, Winter

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

  14 Copy quote

• But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment.

  Donald Judd

  Thinking, Kind, Moments

  "Oral history interview with Donald Judd" by Bruce Hooton, www.aaa.si.edu. February 3, 1965.

  7 Copy quote

• The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.

  Donald Judd

  Years, Doe, Fifteen

  8 Copy quote

• And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman.

  Donald Judd

  Expressionism, Radical, Pollock

  24 Copy quote

• And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League.

  Donald Judd

  Art, League, Jersey

  7 Copy quote

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