Beschreibung:

Property of a Gentlemen Donald Judd Follow Wintergarden Bench 1988 Pine. 92.3 x 87.6 x 172.7 cm (36 1/3 x 34 1/2 x 68 in.)
Provenance Randy Walz New York, gifted directly from the artist Robert Wilson New York Phillips de Pury & Company, London, 'Contemporary Art Day Sale', 29 February 2008, lot 309 Haunch of Vension, London Christie's South Kensington, London, 'Post-War & Contemporary Art', 16 September 2010, lot 23 Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Donald Judd Todd Eberle et al., Art + Design Donald Judd , exh. cat., Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, 1993, pp. 50, 136 for similar examples Barbara Bloemink and Joseph Cunningham Design ≠ Art, Functional Objects From Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread , exh. cat., Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, 2004, p. 39 for a similar example Nigel Prince, ed., Donald Judd A good chair is a good chair , exh. cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2011, p. 94 for a similar example Catalogue Essay 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…. The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness and scale as a chair. These are proportion, which is visible reasonableness. (Donald Judd ‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp’, Donald Judd Furniture: Retrospective , exh. cat., Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1993, p. 7) During the 1960s, rejecting the illusionism of traditional painting and sculpture, Donald Judd began working with industrial materials, creating simplified, geometric three-dimensional forms that explored the relationship between art object, viewer, and the surrounding space. Judd considered these ‘specific objects’ – a term he introduced in his 1965 essay of the same name – a new form of art, which by focusing on material and ‘real’ space, assigned the viewer a more active role, namely rooted in perception. During this period, Judd also designed his first pieces of furniture which, whilst comparable in their materials, form, and considered occupation of space to his art, he recurrently underscored, were differentiated by their intention. Fundamental to Judd’s furniture designs are their practical and holistic requirements. Therefore, these functional objects are conceived with different rules, not as self-referential and autonomous art objects, but as interactive within their environment. This distinction may explain why the present, ‘Wintergarden Bench’, executed in 1988 for Judd’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, was never exhibited. The present example of Judd’s ‘Wintergarden Bench’ – which Judd gifted to one of his assistants, the artist Randy Walz – is one of two produced for the exhibition. Executed in solid pine, the two benches are mirror images of one another and are unique. Both benches feature an additional L-shaped lower panel that is not present on most examples of the model, which Judd originally designed in 1980. The present bench’s open volumes and interconnecting planes that meet at right angles, characteristic of Judd’s furniture designs, encourage the viewer to experience the work both physically and visually from each of its four sides. Correspondingly, its asymmetrical form is illustrative of the multifunctional quality of many of Judd’s designs. In 1968, Judd purchased a five-story building at 101 Spring Street in New York. During his subsequent conversion of the industrial building, Judd produced his first furnishing designs for himself and his family, which in addition to a table and chairs, included a pair of stainless steel sinks featuring ellipse-shaped basins – a form he noted that, unlike the circle, he had never used in his art. Whilst revealing their own visual language and inherent functionality, Judd’s pair of sinks have a distinctly formal presence. Following his move to Marfa, Texas in 1971, Judd continued designing furniture for his home and the series of utilitarian buildings he purchased in Marfa’s downtown during the 1970s and 1980s