Judd's Marfa
A tumbleweed posed perfectly in front of an untitled concrete block by Donald Judd. As we approached closer to Judd’s iconic Marfa creations, bunnies began scurrying back under the blocks to their hideaways, a lone butterfly had joined our art excursion, and the wild West Texas landscape stretched endlessly around us, meeting the brilliant horizon line.
The sky was painted with silver grey clouds, illuminating with the sunlight behind them, casting the most beautiful light above as long plum shadows from the concrete blocks stretched across the dry desert. All eight of us were taken with the serene grandeur of Chinati. A foundation Judd began in 1986 to be a space of large-scale site-specific art, Chinati was a haven of stillness. We strolled alongside Judd’s concrete blocks, each one holding a different vignette of the West Texas vistas. With our coffee in hand and wearing either our sneakers or Tecovas boots, we perused the breadth of Chinati’s grounds, allowing ourselves to be present with the works.
It was Judd who made Marfa what it is known for today- an art epicenter and destination for experiential art. Don’t be so quick to judge kept running through my mind as we stood in the bare desert with the dry and dusty concrete structures outstretched in front of us. The more time you spent here, the more you realized the power in what was being experienced, almost more so than what was being seen.
That was Judd’s ethos with his work. Art is meant to be experienced, and these 15 untitled concrete works were put in place to accomplish just that. The contrast of something man-made with the natural surrounding was something Judd did not experience in New York. Now in Marfa his canvas had expanded, and a new dialogue and extension of his creative direction formed. The conversation between these works and the land is strangely seamless. Though contrasting—the angular, sharply contoured, machine-made structures set against the organic forms of rolling mountains, cacti, and grasses—they appear to exist in harmonious dialogue. Both embrace a very neutral toned palette but with different textures making the moment that you are in, a work of art itself. The placement of Judd's concrete blocks allows you to look at the surrounding landscape through a different view. By peering through some of the blocks, you see cropped compositions of the mountains and bits of the winding highway. Others you can't see through, but the closed blocks evoke within you a curiosity and an acceptance of the the power of subjectivity and the conversation the works are having with the land. Judd invites you to contemplate, to slow down by seeing something unusual in an environment.
Anyone can come to Marfa, and you can do whatever you want with it. The so said rules of the art world don’t seem to exist, thanks to Judd, his vision, and determined spirit. The open range and endless spaces evoke a freedom within all of us, whether artist or art beholder. Judd’s Marfa offers an experience for everyone, inviting visitors to engage with the many facets of life through the power, presence, and perspective of art.
