Let's rescue Donald Judd // two paintings

Hi Eric,

I'm studying Donald Judd some more on the internet, and I like the 2000
Artforum article about him linked at Wikipedia. I have enjoyed his blue
Untitled that is at the Walker here in MN, though I am not a student of
Judd. Now I know a little about him, I don't have an MFA and only took one
art history class in college.

I could also say I was affected or influenced by Judd even though I didn't
know him. "Crude and simple, organic yet intelligent and canny" has been a
character line for U.S. artists going a long way back. I went to Oberlin
college where they have the Oldenburg electric plug, and that affected me,
as did the Venturi wing of the museum, which I think may have been
influenced by Judd. In any case, I learned to like geometric, modern art
and buildings in college at Madison also. Squares, boxes, crude designs,
basic, etc. One of the main levers used to get New World art away from its
suckling relation to Europe. Comme ci comme ca.

Judd's ideas are relevant to an understanding of networks I think. He was
an artist during the First Cold War, during the high period of Modernism (or
later Modernism) which was really the main art movement of the 20th c.,
which was the industrialization century. Now we are in the computerization
century, also called the information revolution century or the network
century. Political-economic revolution wasn't the only or best way to cope
with the problems of the industrial revolution, and I bet it isn't for the
network revolution either.

Judd also seemed to want to simplfy art and get it or keep it away from
debates about Communism, the Viet Nam war, and so on. His ideas of "unlike
in appearance" and "specific objects" I like. That added to what he said
about "art need only be interesting." He said this in a context, which
might inflect it to say "art can't solve everything, or deliver
prefabricated enlightenment." I like that view.

So, indirectly I would say he has affected my own understanding of art and
of the network period. I think there are too many "illusionistic"
representations about the network as such, VR or ideology-decorated fantasy
nets, that are not good as art. Lots of proliferating, crappy expression
that I don't like. Prefab experiences that I don't think help me develop,
or help in other good ways.

Examples of my own works that relate to Judd are the video I think (simple,
basic, crude, kind of unlike in appearance, not trying to do too much beyond
being interesting), the SFMOMA82700, and some other things maybe. Judd did
say he thought painting was finished, but now I feel like painting helps me
so I could have some disagreements with him there. We don't have to agree
with him 100% or take it too hard that he's really famous etc.

Judd is also an object-lesson in what our forefathers approved of and
consecrated. Maybe he was taken as an antidote to something. He definitely
stuck to art-making a lot and I could learn to benefit from that example.

Also, here are two paintings I made this week, before we started talking
about Judd:

http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/bw.html

http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/perch.html

One thing is important, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. How
can we take our own or someone else's rathe antagonism to Judd and convert
it to something good, acceptable, proper? Pound had a lot of objections to
Whitman but also wrote a poem accepting him more.

There was a sculptor who lectured at Oberlin my freshman year, and who
affected me a lot. I forget his name. He worked in metal, made simplified
shapes of houses for example. He had one work which was just two large
beams of metal in an "L" shape on the floor, and at the lecture he said "I
just wanted to create one real corner in space." That affected me for
whatever reason, happenstance or just because. I related it to William
Carlos William's comment about a young writer "trying to get out one clean
sentence."

If Pomo is the tail end of modernism, and we are at the start of Networkism,
we could benefit from getting a more high modern or early modern view, and
cut away from the miasmic cloud of postmodernism. I compare the 19th, 20th,
and 21st centuries by new idea in the first decade (Romanticism, Modernism,
Networkism) then a longish high period (30-50 years), then a kind of a
backpedal or qualification (Victorianism, Postmodernism, and ???) then a
decline/miasma period (Decadents, ??? or net bubble, and ???).

I think the idea of shaping the space relates to Judd also, and this may be
a good idea despite any other flaws etc. he may have.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I think you have a good idea about
having to look at the past to get free, but it's not just a matter of being
swinish as I believe you know. Hitler thought you could get rid of all the
problems of modernity just by burning un-neo-Roman books and art, which was
false overcoming/falze aufhebung on his part. Benjamin saw that we have to
take the very deep look at the totality of the past, all the way back and
all the way forward, to redeem the time of the now and get better.

Best regards,

Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Network
Submissions OK until 9/15
www.geocities.com/genius-2000


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>From: Eric Dymond <[email protected]>
>Reply-To: Eric Dymond <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Judd
>Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 23:37:16 -0700
>
>so I think that Donald Judd set up a pattern of self reflection that
>ruined art for further generatiions (and not in a good way)
>Why did he do it?
>Given the paranoid and self-reflexive atmosphere created by the Neww York
>art landscaoe of Fried and Greenberg, what choice did he have?
>The only choice I see is the one he took and that was to render the current
>art world asunder via the auspices of a systemic approach.
>Was this the only option?
>At the time …, yes, that's all Judd had to work with.
>Reflection gives us more options.
>Cleverly we can go back in time and make Judd fit in to our landscape.
>But did he mean that?
>Fitting Judd into the current dialogue is very difficult.
>How do we approach and describe our necessary online manifestations within
>the context of Donald Judd…., and should we spend the time?
>it sounds so simple, yet it is very difficult.
>Eric
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