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Donald Judd
To Susan Buckwalter, 1964

Artwork Info

Artwork title
To Susan Buckwalter
Artist name
Donald Judd
Date created
1964
Classification
sculpture
Medium
galvanized iron, aluminum, and lacquer
Dimensions
30 in. × 141 in. × 30 in. (76.2 cm × 358.14 cm × 76.2 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.505.A-E
Artwork status
On view on floor 5 as part of Afterimages: Echoes of the 1960s in the Fisher and SFMOMA Collections

Audio Stories

How Judd’s sculptures shape space

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transcripts

SFX: Soundbed that places us in outer space, not in an art museum.  

 

NARRATOR: 

A row of metal cubes hanging on a wall. Sculptures like this make a lot of people go “huh?”  

 

GARY GARRELS: 

He was interested in the real world. How an artist could insert something into a space or a place and completely alter our understanding of what that place was. 

 

CAITLIN HASKELL:  

And I love it because it’s — it is so strange.  

 

NARRATOR:  

Were here with curators Gary Garrels and Caitlin Haskell. 

 

HASKELL:  

He’s trying to get you to contend with something that is really alien!  

 

GARRELS:  

The relationship between an object and the ground balance, the formal qualities of the materials that one is using.  

 

HASKELL:  

You see almost no seams. I mean, that is the trick. It’s like metal origami. He’s using a galvanized steel that allows for these clean, thin surfaces that are visually almost identical. When you actually look closely at them, each of those patterns of the spangling on the metal is different and unique. One of the nice stories about this is that it’s a lacquer that was used on Harley Davidson motorcycles. The people who are really good at repairing these are, like, auto-body guys. It’s this incredible craftsmanship to make something that looks very light but also has all of these trappings of industry, too. 

 

GARRELS: 

The horizontal line of the blue is like a horizon line. And your eye moves up over it, to the wall, which really becomes part of the piece. We begin to become conscious of the way theyre floating off the floor. Theyre almost defiant of gravity  

 

SFX: Open space sound bed slowly fades 

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Other Works by Donald Judd

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