American minimalist Donald Judd’s stark, material-driven aesthetic is the calling card of the refined collector, with tastemakers from all walks of life coveting his furniture designs with significant – and occasionally misplaced – enthusiasm (Kim Kardashian lawsuit sound familiar?). Despite his posthumous positioning at the centre of art world discourse around austere aesthetics, Judd vehemently rejected the conjoining of design and architecture as art, and often spoke of his works as objects of pragmatism, born at the dawn of necessity in residence.
As featured in an essay published in the new book Donald Judd Furniture, in 1993 the designer wrote, “The configuration and the scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional. If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous.”
Co-published by Mack and the Judd Foundation, this new book appears as a monument to the furniture maker’s life and career in design, spanning 1970 to 1991. More than 100 pieces of furniture are showcased in unusually technical detail, most of which were designed for his living and working spaces at 101 Spring Street, New York City, and in Presidio County, Texas.
Below, discover the stories behind five of Donald Judd’s most iconic furniture designs.
Judd bought his New York City home and studio at 101 Spring Street in 1968, in the increasingly vibrant and creative SoHo neighbourhood of Manhattan. Much of the furniture documented in Donald Judd Furniture was produced specifically for the spaces he lived and worked within this property, including the Fourth Floor Low Table 18, designed in 1981. Made in maple, the 45cm-tall piece offered a functional table top surface at a much lower height than the dining table it neighboured.
In 1970, Judd made his first – and arguably one of his most recognisable – pieces of furniture. Designed for his 101 Spring Street studio and home, Fifth Floor Bed 3 is a strikingly simplistic construction of one-inch walnut boards of varying widths installed at floor level. With functionality always at the top of Judd’s creative agenda, the design features built-in switches for lights, as well as electrical sockets for the convenience of a bedside telephone or lamp.
Embodying Judd’s stripped-back, hyper-functional approach to design, the furniture maker created Narrow Frame Chair 72 in 1989, for use in his living and work spaces at 101 Spring Street. Originally produced in cherry, the staunch confidence of the chair’s elegantly skeletal form allows it to sit just as comfortably as a standalone piece by the bathtub as it does in a dining table choreography. The chair’s subtly notable proportions are a signature of Judd’s now iconic design language.
By 1974, Judd had purchased a group of properties in Marfa, Texas, now referred to as La Mansana de Chinati. In 1979 he made Library Bed 15 in pine, as part of his famed Two-by-Twelves furniture series. Originally created for La Mansana de Chinati’s library, the bed would later be reproduced for Casa Perez, a property he bought in 1982, located around 45 miles outside of Marfa, in Presidio County, and named after the family who operated it as a goat ranch in the late 1940s.
1984 was the first year Judd would design and produce furniture specifically to be sold. Collaborating with Doris Lehni Quarella at Lehni AG in Switzerland, he developed a new series of metal furniture pieces, including Metal Bookshelf 114. The collection featured new configurations made in 21 colours from the Rally system, as well as copper, brass and anodised aluminium. It also included a number of benches in folded metal with similar forms as the Two-by-Twelve benches. Judd’s longtime studio manager Dudley Del Balso organised a show of the metal furniture at Max Protetch Gallery in New York.
Donald Judd Furniture is co-published by Mack and the Judd Foundation, and is out now.