Mel Bochner writing about the new publication of Donald Judd’s collected writing.
For my generation, Judd posed the same problem as Picasso did for the Abstract Expressionists; you either had to go over, under, around, or through him. Conceptual, process, and Earth art, each in their own way, constituted a rejection of the “specific object.”
The importance of Judd’s sculpture is clear, but can his writings still be useful to a new generation of artists? I believe the answer is yes, but only if their republication provokes younger artists to initiate the kind of vigorous public conversation that is so conspicuously missing from the art world today.