Conditions of light
An in-depth look at a work in Tate’s Collection and its sensitivity to natural light.
Work featured
Untitled 1972
Copper and light cadmium red enamel an aluminium
91.6 x 155.5 x 178.2 cm
Tate. Presented by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery 1992 See this work in Tate's Collection
Transcript
This piece made by Donald Judd in 1972 is quite simply an open copper box with a cadmium red light base, Donald Judd never made a great deal of money from his work during his life time although now the works sell for very considerable sums, but what money he did make he ploughed back into his own work so he began in the ‘70s, as he began to sell one or two pieces to explore the possibilities of slightly richer materials, like copper, like brass and to make work on a larger scale. This box appears to be a copper box from across the room but within it seems to glow in an extraordinary way, that of course is in part the reflection of the copper on itself but then as you come nearer to the piece you discover the true source of this rather brilliant orangey-red, which is the copper reflecting the cadmium red light from the base and it’s a very unexpected juxtaposition because as you look into the box, you see it’s reflection doubled you’re not quite sure really whether the wall of the box on the other side is simply dividing a double cube into two single cubes or indeed whether it is a reflection and it’s a very very good example of the way in which Judd starts with something very simple and as you look into it and you explore it you find more and more complexity and in a certain sense, less and less to be able to comprehend and understand.
I think appreciating Judd’s work is very much about feeling rather than rational thought….most people when they are looking at Judd’s work assume that it’s all worked out to the millimetre and in a certain sense it is very precise but it’s not that mathematical, it’s a combination as he put it of intuition and feeling and rational thought trying to discover in a certain sense the unknowable within the rational.
Well, we placed this work close to the natural daylight, in part as a recognition that Judd himself placed these kinds of works close to the daylight because obviously with changing conditions of light they change at different times of the day, and light was a very important component of Judd’s work whether it was illuminating the surface, changing the character, literally the sense of solidity of the box at a given moment or in other pieces, such as some of the stacks, breaking the piece or indeed where you have Plexiglas lids you have light coming through the stack, it’s these kinds of effects that really absorbed Judd and especially I think towards, in the last decade of his career where he was working quite frequently living in Texas, working with the conditions of light in the south west of the USA with very long days, changing conditions of light and this became increasingly important to him.
