Donald Judd: Annotated Bibliography:

Caplans, John. Don Judd. Pasadena Art Museum June 1971 . In this book John Caplans first gives a critical analysis of Donald Judd’s works. In the second half of the book is a documented interview with Judd himself. In the interview Caplans focus’s mainly on his process and material rather than emotional or aesthetic qualities. This book was useful to my research topic as I was able to get an insight into how Judd’s material work links to conveying the concepts within abstraction and minimalism. I was also able to deduct my own emotional meanings hidden beneath his responses about materials and process. The only limitation I found in this book was that the interview was slightly too focused on the mechanical processes Judd applies in building his pieces, which is not that useful in relation to connecting Judd’s work to our thematic area.

Batchelor, David., Jervis, John., Raskin, David., Serota, Nicholas., Shiff, Richard., Judd, Donald. Donald Judd. D.A.P./Tate; 1st Am. ed. edition (March 2, 2004). This book is a survey in which contributors reflect some of the critic’s different experiences and discussions with the artist over time as well as exploring the conflicts of previous interpretations of Judd’s works. Judd himself also contributes with reflections on fellow artists abstract pieces. This provides interesting depths of views to abstraction and Judd’s involvement as a minimalist. Whereby the previous book was more process and material focused- this book offered a far more personal and emotive vantage point on our thematic area. The only limitation I felt with this book was that it was quite dense and involved a process of extracting the useful points. It was also slightly confusing when it references plates that don’t appear to be near the page it was referencing.

Ovation TV. “Donald Judd’s Marfa Texas” Channel was re-launched on June 20, 2007 online. http://community.ovationtv.com/_Donald-Judds-Marfa-Texas/video/262279/16878.html (filmed 2 years ago). This video starts with a brief comment from critic John Yao, leading next to a brief interview with Judd. I found it very useful as it comes back to this idea of ‘metaphor’ and it was from this video I was able to further research the meaning of ‘metaphor’, within abstraction. This critic focuses on Judd’s anti-representational attitude, commenting on the unjustifiable use of metaphor after all the horrid things that had taken place during the war. The limitation with this critic’s response is that it was very one sided and self assured-making it harder to know whether you should trust in what he’s point of view is. There were a lot of backlash comments noted below the video in response. So you have to be aware that this is a very personal justification to Judd’s work.