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Lot Essay
Created in 1979, the present work is a compelling example of Donald Judd’s ‘progression’ series. Wall-mounted and near-architectural in impact, it is a horizontal, semi-cylindrical relief of gleaming, red anodised aluminium—exactly 69 inches wide, and five inches high—divided into unequally-spaced sections. Arranged from smallest to largest, these volumes and voids follow the mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence: each is the sum of the previous two. The work’s orientation can be flipped from left to right, with the artist stipulating only that it be shown horizontally. For Judd, the Fibonacci sequence offered an asymmetrical yet ordered compositional principle, born of a mathematical ‘given’ that already existed in the world. The present work’s precise, seamless form and anodised, non-painterly colour—produced by the sheet-metal fabricators Bernstein Brothers, with whom Judd had collaborated since 1964—likewise elide any trace of the artist’s hand in favour of a seemingly autonomous, self-defining presence. Departing radically from the illusionistic, expressive traditions of sculpture and painting, these qualities govern the works Judd sought to create, which he called ‘specific objects.’
Judd is often described as a Minimalist, but always rejected this association himself, refusing to identify with any artistic movement. Indeed, while his devotion to a strict range of geometric forms and industrial materials might at first be seen as ‘minimal’, his body of work in fact unfolds a rich diversity of colour, surface, scale and volume. He employed Plexiglass, wood, raw and polished metals, automotive pigment and enamelled, galvanised and anodised coatings in ways that point beyond the objects’ insistent factuality—and their decisive break with art history—towards a distinct aesthetic sensibility. The rounded protrusions of the present work, sometimes referred to as ‘bull-nose’ segments, were a favourite form of Judd’s, and derived from his initial inspiration for the ‘progression’ works. In 1964, he had made a plywood box-shaped sculpture with a semi-circular, internally divided channel incised in its upper face: the cut semi-circles left over from that box provided the material for the first wooden ‘progression’ sculpture. Soon afterwards, with Bernstein Brothers, he began to produce metal ‘progressions’ in a dazzling array of colours and precise, graceful forms.
Discovered by the Italian mathematician Leonardo da Pisa in 1202, the Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical series—where each number is the sum of the previous two, beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on—that lies behind many patterns of growth and proliferation found in nature. Its proportions can be seen in the reproduction of bees, in natural materials such as leaves, pinecones, antlers and seashells, and in the human body, relating closely to the ‘golden’ or ‘divine’ ratio that fascinated Renaissance artists such as Botticelli and Leonardo. The Italian Arte Povera sculptor Mario Merz, a near-contemporary of Judd’s, took the sequence (and some of these organic objects) as the basis for much of his work, proposing a prelapsarian vision of man in harmony with nature.
For Judd, the Fibonacci structure of the ‘progressions’ was something more spatial and intuitive, to be apprehended by the viewer in an instant. ‘You don’t walk up to it and understand how it is working,’ he said, ‘but I think you do understand that there is a scheme there, and that it doesn’t look as if it is just done part by part visually ... The progressions made it possible to use an asymmetrical arrangement, yet to have some sort of order not involved in composition. The point is that the series doesn’t mean anything to me as mathematics, nor does it have anything to do with the nature of the world’ (D. Judd quoted in ‘Don Judd: An Interview with John Coplans’, Donald Judd, exh. cat. Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena 1971, p. 40). Despite Judd’s disavowal of ‘anything to do with the nature of the world’, the sequence here situates his work in relation to the physical environment with an irrefutable harmony. The object is imbued with the qualities of developing entity, like a tree, sunflower or nautilus shell: in all the singularity and clarity of its conception, it holds an expansive aura of possibility.
Judd is often described as a Minimalist, but always rejected this association himself, refusing to identify with any artistic movement. Indeed, while his devotion to a strict range of geometric forms and industrial materials might at first be seen as ‘minimal’, his body of work in fact unfolds a rich diversity of colour, surface, scale and volume. He employed Plexiglass, wood, raw and polished metals, automotive pigment and enamelled, galvanised and anodised coatings in ways that point beyond the objects’ insistent factuality—and their decisive break with art history—towards a distinct aesthetic sensibility. The rounded protrusions of the present work, sometimes referred to as ‘bull-nose’ segments, were a favourite form of Judd’s, and derived from his initial inspiration for the ‘progression’ works. In 1964, he had made a plywood box-shaped sculpture with a semi-circular, internally divided channel incised in its upper face: the cut semi-circles left over from that box provided the material for the first wooden ‘progression’ sculpture. Soon afterwards, with Bernstein Brothers, he began to produce metal ‘progressions’ in a dazzling array of colours and precise, graceful forms.
Discovered by the Italian mathematician Leonardo da Pisa in 1202, the Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical series—where each number is the sum of the previous two, beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on—that lies behind many patterns of growth and proliferation found in nature. Its proportions can be seen in the reproduction of bees, in natural materials such as leaves, pinecones, antlers and seashells, and in the human body, relating closely to the ‘golden’ or ‘divine’ ratio that fascinated Renaissance artists such as Botticelli and Leonardo. The Italian Arte Povera sculptor Mario Merz, a near-contemporary of Judd’s, took the sequence (and some of these organic objects) as the basis for much of his work, proposing a prelapsarian vision of man in harmony with nature.
For Judd, the Fibonacci structure of the ‘progressions’ was something more spatial and intuitive, to be apprehended by the viewer in an instant. ‘You don’t walk up to it and understand how it is working,’ he said, ‘but I think you do understand that there is a scheme there, and that it doesn’t look as if it is just done part by part visually ... The progressions made it possible to use an asymmetrical arrangement, yet to have some sort of order not involved in composition. The point is that the series doesn’t mean anything to me as mathematics, nor does it have anything to do with the nature of the world’ (D. Judd quoted in ‘Don Judd: An Interview with John Coplans’, Donald Judd, exh. cat. Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena 1971, p. 40). Despite Judd’s disavowal of ‘anything to do with the nature of the world’, the sequence here situates his work in relation to the physical environment with an irrefutable harmony. The object is imbued with the qualities of developing entity, like a tree, sunflower or nautilus shell: in all the singularity and clarity of its conception, it holds an expansive aura of possibility.