Donald Judd

This sculpture is one of three examples in copper executed in November 1970. The form was first used in 1967 when Judd executed three examples (DSS 102) with red lacquer on galvanized iron.

Horizontal wall progressions hold a primary place of importance in Judd's lexicon as they are the earliest objects in his oeuvre in which he achieved a geometrically and evenly determined organization of solids and voids. Beginning with his 1964 untitled wood piece painted in red lacquer (DSS 45), Judd's progressions set the standard for the artist's finely proportioned structures which are equal in part to part and whole to whole.  Abandoning the wood of the 1964 progression, Judd preferred to use metals, such as copper and stainless steel, for the crisp distinction it brought to the edges of his forms.

Judd's achievement in three-dimensionality was as radical as Jackson Pollock's innovations in the realm of canvas painting, as Judd recognized in his art criticism written from 1959 to 1965. Rather than balancing major and minor elements into a hierarchical structure of non-equality, the `overall' compositions of Pollock's drips makes all parts of the surface equally apparent and physical. The drips are clear and distinct, but at the same time, they are subordinated to the service of a total unity. This simplification of the polarity between the whole and the parts is essential to Judd's art, in accordance to his preference for the geometric and for the non-gestural emphasis on man-made materials.

The progressive nature of this wall progression format is a series of voids and projections, in which the solid sections are constructed by a progressive increase in size from right to left, and the voids increase in size in equal proportion from left to right. ``The actual system had no meaning for Judd; what was important was that viewers intuitively realized that something other than personal choice was operative. Such adherence to arithmetical or geometric formulas not only avoided the speculative claims associated with personal authorship, but it also gave Judd a means of conceiving his work at the outset as a whole unit rather than arranging it part-bypart over time.'' (Barbara Haskell in Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Donald Judd, 1988, p. 49).