Duchampian News & Views
Donald Judd or Cheap Furniture?
Author : marcelduchamp_admin August 29, 2011
Classic Donald Judd Work. Or is it?
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Donald Judd can be quite spectacular. Out in Marfa, Texas for instance, where the minimalist sculptor purchased land, his giant stone boxes eerily offset the empty horizon and rustling waves of yellow grass: a cipher in the landscape. But some of his works do, truth be told, look exactly like cheap furniture. If you doubt this, take the quiz at reverent.org.
The point is to guess whether a given image is a priceless Donald Judd sculpture or a piece of cheap furniture. I scored an embarassing 33 percent.
Of course one could argue that the test is not exactly fair. Was there minimalist-chic furniture at Wal-Mart in Judd’s day, i.e. the 1970’s? The style available to mass-market shoppers today may even, in fact, have something to do with Judd himself.
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