Many people first come to the work of artist Donald Judd via the small west-Texas town of Marfa.
With the idea of finding a permanent place to install his and his contemporaries' artwork, Judd first came to Marfa for an extended stay in 1972. Over the next two decades, until his death in 1994, Judd (and with him, the Dia Art Foundation) bought and renovated increasing amounts of land and dozens of buildings in the town and at a former Army base, Fort Russell, at the town's edge. Today, Marfa is home to the Judd Foundation which maintains the many spaces that made up Judd's home, studios and library; and the Chinati Foundation, established by Judd, which takes up all of former Fort Russell and operates as a museum with ten permanent art installations by as many artists, and two changing exhibition spaces (in perspective and approach, very similar to Dia:Beacon in upstate New York). Marfa's high concentration of art activity (including not only Judd and Chinati but a bustling contemporary art scene, the center of which is Ballroom Marfa) and its distance from everything else (two hours drive from El Paso, and thirty miles away from the next closest town) makes visiting the town something of an art pilgrimage.
Along with his artwork and art installations, Judd is also a well-known and well-respected art writer. Coming to Judd via his writings—whether you do so before, after, or during a visit to Marfa—is a kind of pilgrimage in and of itself.
The first stop on the Judd writing pilgrimage is Donald Judd: The Complete Writings 1959–1975, Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports, Statements, Complaints. Often referred to simply as "the yellow book", this collection of Judd's writings was first published in 1975 and, after falling out of print for some time, was subsequently re-printed in 2005, both times by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Press. Now readily available, this is the primary Judd volume for study today. It includes Judd's most famous single essay, Specific Objects, as well as his many early art reviews, about which artist and writer Mel Bochner has said: "Judd produced the most important body of art criticism of the 1960s. Simply put, if you want to understand what happened in contemporary art between 1959 and 1965 there is no other place to turn."
What's important to note, and what's often overlooked, however, is that though this is a volume of "complete" writings and is the one currently available in stores and most libraries, it's not actually complete. Judd, after all, lived until 1994. Meaning that the yellow book leaves out nineteen years, or more than half of Judd's career as an artist and an art writer.
Given the richness and importance of Judd's extant writings, the idea that half his output still remains widely unread is pretty exciting. The art world version of, say, discovering a half-dozen lost Mark Twain manuscripts. Of course, Judd's later writings are not really lost. They definitely were read upon their original publication, and certainly more and more so as Judd's reputation grew. But the difficulty in finding them today, and the more ready availability of the yellow book, has undoubtedly led to a kind of cultural blind spot or amnesia about the work. To wit, two of Judd's major artistic legacies are his personal installations in Marfa, and his creation of the Chinati Foundation there. Both of these moves let Judd explore and develop important ideas about how art, once created, is experienced and how it relates to architecture and the land. It was only in 1972 however that Judd first started spending extended time in Marfa, which means that the yellow book lacks the bulk of the artist's mature thinking on the subject.
There have been a few efforts at collecting at least some of this later material, particularly Donald Judd: The Complete Writings, 1976–1986, published by the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven. This small, paperback volume includes essays on installation, art and architecture, Abstract Expressionism, masterpieces, symmetry, Marfa, furniture (also an important pursuit for Judd which happened primarily later in his career) and Chinati. Ultimately worth the struggle, the book is unfortunately nearly impossible to get a hold of, with virtually none currently for sale and maybe only a couple dozen copies listed in library holdings in the States.
Other than the Van Abbemuseum edition there have been two other European efforts: Donald Judd: Ecrits 1963–1990, and Donald Judd: Architecktur (1989), this last of which is not focused solely on Judd's writings, but includes a fair amount nonetheless. The books are in French and German respectively, but may include at least some text in English.
Beyond these volumes, the next stop in tracking down Judd's later writings isn't to a book but instead to the Chinati Foundation Newsletter. Published annually, each issue of the Foundation's extended newsletter includes one or more essays by Judd, and each issue is available in full on the Foundation's website as a free, downloadable PDF. While many of the Judd pieces included have been from earlier years—and so already available in the yellow or Van Abbemuseum books—we found seven that are newer (links are to the full newsletter downloads):
And that's it. Short of going to the library and researching and accessing his essays, articles and reviews publication by publication, the sources we've cited so far represent the current extent of Donald Judd's complete and collected writings. For now.
Tantalizingly, in the library at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, is a large stack of photocopies that are proofs for a book referred to by one Chinati intern and guide as Volume I. As it turns out, it was Judd's intention to publish his complete, collected writings (essays and articles previously published and not) and he was planning on doing it in three volumes. The photocopied proofs of Volume I were the partial result of that intention. No word yet who the original publisher might have been, or how much further than the proofs of Volume I Judd might have gotten in the process before his death. However, in good news for fans of Judd's writing, the Judd Foundation has confirmed it still plans "to do all that Judd wanted with his writings" even as they caution that "there remains much work and research to do in advance with this vast archive".
In the meantime, there's one last book definitely worth mentioning, not of Judd's writings themselves but of an appreciation of them. In May of 2008, the Chinati Foundation hosted a symposium called The Writings of Donald Judd and subsequently published a book of the eleven papers presented there by a variety of artists, historians, critics and curators. The various papers cover not only the influence and meanings of Judd's writings (specifically and broadly) but also Judd's life, artistic development and the reception of his work; as well as the role and history of artists' writings in general. Surprisingly, the book is not being distributed anywhere, nor is it even listed on the Chinati website. It does exist though, and we're told that if you contact Chinati directly they'd be happy to ring you up a copy and ship it out. Try them at 432) 729-4362, the 200+ page paperback costs around $20 and is certainly worth it. Or, call up the Marfa Book Company at 432) 729-3906. A bookstore that deserves a mention of its own, not only as Marfa's only bookshop and one of the cultural centers of the town, but as an undeniably beautiful and friendly store with a world-class selection of art books that includes, of course, the yellow book.
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 09:57AM ;)
Front view of the new E.Book e-reader;)
Back of the new E.Book e-reader, with custom engraving 
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