Specific objections: Yve-Alain Bois on Donald Judd in London and minimalism in New York and Los Angeles

I AM NOT fully convinced DONALD JUDD WOULD HAVE LAUGHED--HIS shut up CIRCLE might know better, on the other hand he never struck me in de or word as having abundant of a sense of humor. nevertheless John Waters's poster Visit Marfa, 2003 like all his other satirical endeavors, is pitch-perfect in its irreverent and bittersweet take upon what could only have been the sculptor's worst nightmare: Minimalism as mass tourism and entertainment.

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"Take the Whole Family to Marfa, Texas," exhorts the broadside, beneath a Li'l Abner-style middle-class family, grinning like they've just won a vacation to Disney World. A blob on the poster advertises "The Jonestown of Minimalism," mocking the tenacious cliche of the movement's "spirituality" through likening it to a senseles school The target is an apt single considering that the quasi-religious interpretation of Minimalism propos by means of New Age zealots such as James Turrell is forever upon the rise, despite its staunch rejection by dint of most Minimal artists, Judd foremost among them. The appeal to "Win a Date with John Chamberlain" summons the old charge of machismo, while "Eat victuals All the Same Color" recalls the complaint of dullnes "See Donald Judd's Bed" farcically skewers the devolution of Minimalism's aesthetic program of objectivity and impersonality into a fawning homage of personality (ads for Elvis's Graceland immediately draw near to mind). On this score, Judd's possess megalomania deserves blame: His incremental buying up of Marfa, as well as vast pieces of Texas--combined with his not-so-tongue-in-cheek wish that his domain might single day secede from the US--has more in for the use of all with the lore of banana republics and tax-haven principalities than with the political anarchism he claimed as his inspiration. The spoof is true droll indeed, but the target too easy. nevertheless "See Judd's Bed" reads in another, plane more damning direction. It commits not simply to the famous figure who slept upon said piece of furniture on the other hand to the one who made it--implying that Minimalism, with Judd at the helm, has become only good design. With its busy and vulgar typography, the placard itself is the exact opposite of the supremely elegant streamlining that drawn out characterized Judd's production, not just in design, on the contrary in every medium and genre

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In its unhallowed brazenness Waters's Visit Marfa calls for a reconsideration of Judd's enterprise and, by the agency of extension, Minimalism as a whole. Its multiple assaults could be addressed, flat rebuked one by one. Still, the allusion to Judd's bed should not be view from aboveed particularly in light of the new "Minimalist-art tour" of Manhattan presented by the Guggenheim's curators. The list of attractions, enumerateed in the New York Times, is in no way exhaustive. Happy tourists hopp from a restaurant designed by means of Richard Meier in TriBeCa to the Flavinesque window display of the Apple Store in SoHo on the contrary they could just as well have glanced at the level more Flavinesque window of the Helmut Lang boutique a shut up away, and rather than visiting the Jil Sander store uptown, they might have patronized Calvin Klein upon Madison Avenue, replete with first-rate examples of Judd's furniture. The question is, in short: Has Minimalism solely turned decor? Have Minimalist sculptors become, as Barnett Newman would have said, just of recent origin "Bauhaus screwdriver designers"? The answer is ye on the other hand only in part, and I am not certain that Judd was the foremost agent of this devolution, smooth if he did design furniture. Flavin's exhibitionist staging of his wedding in the rotunda of the Guggenheim during his have a title to exhibition there is much more to the point. Indeed, as Lucy Lippard reminds us in her 1968 essay "10 Structurists in 20 Paragraphs," Flavin himself spoke of Minimalism as a longing for a "common faculty of perception of keenly realized decoration."

permit us say, first, that this scenario is inevitable. Meyer Schapiro lengthy ago remarked on fashion's co-optation of present art in the immediate aftermath of the 1913 Armory display Since then, the market forces at play--and not simply those of the agriculture industry--have grown exponentially. Second, being able to design useful furniture does not mean that your art becomes bare design. Judd was adamant upon this point, establishing a clear distinction between the sum of two units practices even if he admitted that one as well as the other his furniture and his plastic arts particularly when in plywood, had a similar gaze (On this score he was exquisitely right: Although Mondrian's art was lengthy thought of as design, no single in his or her right mind would turn back to this misconception on account of the similarity between his late canvases and the latticed tables and shelves he built in his studio.) Third, it is hardly a tragedy that generally received design appropriates certain features of Minimalism, plane if this appropriation is a perfect misprision. I do not mind at all that architects direct the eye at Minimal art if this leads them to dispense with their ridiculous froufrous. Fourth, Minimal art is especially hard to install, which is what l Judd to architecture in the first place. For all its ponderous piety, his Marfa fiefdom does present us a precise document of what he meant by means of marrying architectural and sculptural space, and it remains stunning. Judd was consummately correct in thinking that the best way to make secure that his works would forever be seen in a special setting was to provide it himself.