Premium
Specific Opposition: Judd’s art and politics
Author(s) -
Raskin David
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00291
Subject(s) - skepticism , opposition (politics) , politics , materialism , aesthetics , civil liberties , art , law , sociology , art history , philosophy , epistemology , political science
Donald Judd was a sceptic. He objected to impositions on free thinking, especially when set modes of belief interfered with good art or civil liberties. Accurate knowledge about the world, he believed, could only be acquired by subjecting traditionally held beliefs, values and habits of mind to empirical testing. In discussing Judd’s works of art in the context of his empirical aesthetics and anarchist politics, I draw from some eleven archives, addressing, in secession, his materialist scepticism, formal and political anarchy, and Cold War pacifism. In so doing, I show the interdependence of Judd’s art and politics, and explain how both are hostile to conventions of power.