Known for large-scale minimalist work, Donald Judd was a passionate environmentalist throughout his career. As a founding member of the Texas chapter of the Environmental Defense Fund, Judd championed conservation efforts and worked to support sustainability, ecology, and preservation. These environmental practices were inextricably linked with Judd’s artistic practice, which embodied the belief that art is an extension of its environment. In 1986, Judd opened The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas–a contemporary art museum focused on bringing together art, architecture, and nature. At Chinati, Judd focused on creating and showcasing public works that engaged with the desert landscape, and invited other artists to do the same. He planted gardens, and began a re-planting project, returning native plants to the grounds of the museum.
These practices were an extension of Judd’s creative philosophy, which focused on the physical environment as part of art itself. Judd radicalized sculpture with these ideas, and his pieces, which used unconventional materials and engaged with their surroundings in radical and unprecedented ways. One of Judd’s most recognized–and favorite–forms were his “stacks,” sculptures built from cantilevered boxes, hung vertically on the wall. Untitled (Menziken 88-16), 1988, is one of Judd’s most prolific stacks, a masterpiece that sees Judd working with his most prominent material: space. It’s a testament to the way art and its surrounding environments–whether man-made or natural–are in continuous conversation; a fluid dialogue in which art is not divorced from or a commentary on nature, but an undeniable part of it. This emphasis on space and form encourages viewers to consider spatial relationships, and the simplicity of each work–no ornamentation, no distractions–facilitates an immersive experience that urges viewers to reconsider how they interact with the world around them.
At the center of Judd’s philosophy was a focus on minimalism, and a rejection of commercialization and commodification. He believed in the purity of art, and the power of form–an extension of his ethos around the environment, as nature is the ultimate organic form, and art–as well as humans–should not take away from it. On the contrary, Judd believed art should engage with nature and work in harmony with it.
