Untitled

Judd served in the army before taking a degree in philosophy from Columbia University and moving on to study painting at the Art Students League of New York. In 1965, he published a widely influential essay that gave Minimalism (contrary to his disavowal of the term) its earliest theoretical voice. In “Specific Objects,” he identified a “new three-dimensional work”—burgeoning amid the conditions of the moment, one wherein “movements no longer work” and “linear history has unraveled somewhat”—and posing a direct challenge to both painting and sculpture. 

Installed as specified by the artist (150 centimeters from the floor to the top of the piece), this boxlike work holds space as Judd envisioned: in a particular relation to the floor, and to the viewer, with its blue Plexiglas element facing down, beneath, and under (versions from the same era include yellow, green, and amber Plexiglas).