Donald Judd: Artist, Architect?

Each year thousands of art pilgrims brave long travel and scant accommodations to admire the Spartan works of Donald Judd in Marfa. Few, if any, pay homage to the buildings that house those pieces.

Perhaps they should. In a new book published by Birkhäuser, architect and Texas Tech University associate professor Urs Peter "Upe" Flueckiger establishes how these structures, deliberately renovated by Judd, play an integral role in fulfilling the artist’s vision of creating an artistic microcosm for himself and collaborators in the lonely West Texas community.

After all, Marfa was Judd’s vehicle for eschewing major galleries and museums and presenting his shadow-bending works on his own terms. He moved doors, created windows and in many cases completely overhauled the buildings he purchased to ensure that his pieces were presented to their benefit. 

“Architects basically define space,” Flueckiger said. “And Judd was very good at that, even though he’s mostly known as an artist. Perhaps the best place to see examples of that talent is in Marfa.”

Among them are two artillery sheds that Judd converted to house his ubiquitous 100 untitled metal boxes. The glass-sided structures are as much a part of the work as the boxes themselves, allowing desert light to flood through the slatted constructions and creating interplay between art and terrain that juxtaposes cold geometry against distant mountains.

Flueckiger, perhaps the first person to approach Judd’s Marfa collection from the perspective of an architect, has spent six years traveling to Marfa to document the buildings. His book, “Donald Judd: Architecture in Marfa, Texas,” is illustrated with renderings made by Flueckiger based on measurements he took on site. It demonstrates the lasting influence the structures have had on the field of architecture.

“People look at the buildings today and they say that they are pretty buildings, but they lose perspective of the buildings as they were in 1971, when they were literally falling apart,” Flueckiger said. “No one is interested in the fact that Judd was doing what we now refer to as adaptive reuse.”

Story produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing, 806-742-2136.
Photo by Neal Hinkle