Image: Courtesy Judd
Foundation
Archives Image ©
Barbara Quinn
word, Gesamtkunstwerk, but we do not use it
casually. It applies to houses where there is
an exceptional unity to envelope and contents,
usually because the architect (or owner, as the
case may be) has overseen shell, furnishings
and accessories, especially works of art.
At Spring Street, Donald Judd created an
unusually rigorous Gesamtkunstwerk, an
almost lifelong project which he wrote about
extensively, leaving for posterity not only the
space and works themselves, but a valuable
body of thought on the interrelationship between
art, architecture and furniture. A prolific and
proficient writer, Judd, before attaining fame
as an artist, earned a B.S. in philosophy at
Columbia then began graduate studies there in
art history, working, in the sixties, as a critic for
ARTnews, Arts Magazine and Art International.
HYLAND
