Donald Judd
Rejected the word sculpture, made boxes to a specification, and rebuilt a Texas town around them.
Donald Judd was born in Missouri in 1928, worked first as an art critic, and set out in Specific Objects in 1965 the argument that painting and sculpture were both exhausted and that what was needed was neither. The work that followed was fabricated to his specification by industrial workshops rather than made by hand — stacks of galvanised iron on a wall, boxes of plywood or anodised aluminium with coloured Plexiglas, progressions calculated by mathematical series. He rejected the label Minimalism throughout. From 1973 he bought buildings in Marfa, Texas, and installed work there permanently. He died in 1994.
Fabrication is the central question in this market. Judd specified materials, dimensions and finishes exactly, and the difference between a work fabricated in his lifetime under his supervision and one produced later is fundamental — the Judd Foundation maintains the catalogue raisonne and is the authority on what is and is not authorised. Surfaces are unforgiving: anodised aluminium and Plexiglas scratch, and neither can be restored invisibly, so condition weighs heavily. Woodcuts and prints in editions are a substantial and much more accessible body of work.
If you own a work by Donald Judd
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.