Anodized aluminum with brown acrylic sheets
2 units, each 50 × 100 × 50 cm
(19 5/8 × 39 5/16 × 19 5/8 inches)
Donald Judd installed seven anodized aluminum works at his studio at Las Casas. Each of the works has dimensions that are consistently proportional, either 1:4:1 or, as in this work, 1:2:1.
This piece includes two units hung side by side. Each unit has a twenty-five-centimeter-wide anodized aluminum panel that divides its front face in a proportion of 1:4. Judd made works the same dimensions of these individual units to create other kinds of multi-unit works for the wall, including pieces with four or six units hung in a horizontal configuration and works with four or six units hung in a vertical configuration, among others.
Each work engages space by projecting from the wall, as Judd indicated, "at least as much as its height."1 In his 1983 essay "Art and Architecture," Judd wrote, "Proportion is very important to us, both in our minds and lives and as objectified visually, since it is thought and feeling undivided, since it is unity and harmony, easy or difficult, and often peace and quiet. Proportion is specific and identifiable in art and architecture and creates our space and time."2
1 Donald Judd, "Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular" (1993), in Donald Judd Writings, ed. Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray (New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016), 841.
2 Donald Judd, "Art and Architecture" (1983), in Donald Judd Writings, 347–48.
Judd, Donald. Räume Spaces. Wiesbaden: Stankowski-Siftung / Museum Wiesbaden, 1993, p. 125.