[Studies of Colonial Architectural Fragments and Stepped Circle, Baja California, Mexico; and 2 Views from train en route from New York to Marfa, Texas]

Donald Judd

1965–67 · Chromogenic prints · Photographs

In these carefully composed studies of vernacular architecture in Baja, Mexico, Judd enlarged the scope of his art by revealing primitive antecedents to the industrial logic of accumulation, standardization, and geometric form more overtly referred to in his modular sculpture. Unselfconscious ur-forms such as a towering stack of logs, the stone walls of crumbling buildings, and successive views of a mysterious, stepped circle embedded in the barren landscape display the mind's deep-coded ordering procedures, and thus are a readymade metaphor for Judd's own quest for irreducible form. They also prefigure the interest shown in the picturesque potential of ruins by then emerging "Earthworks" artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, who would soon apply the strategies of Minimalism to the untamed world outside of the gallery and museum.

Artist

Donald Judd

Date

1965–67

Medium

Chromogenic prints

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2001