50 Quotes by Donald Judd

If a chair or a building is not functional … it is ridiculous.

The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.

Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be.

In the summer there are twelve cottonwoods around the pool, which in the winter become an elevated thicket. There is also a courtyard with a small garden of plants that stay green all year. The winter is bleak. This place is primarily for the installation of art, necessarily for whatever architecture of my own that can be included in an existing situation, for work, and altogether for my idea of living.

In terms of existing, everything is equal.

Color, to continue had to occur in space.

If someone says it's art, it's art.

It takes a great deal of time and thought to install work carefully. This should not always be thrown away. Most art is fragile and some should be placed and never moved again. Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be. Somewhere, just as the platinum iridium meter guarantees the tape measure, a strict measure must exist for the art of this time and place.

You’re getting rid of the things that people used to think were essential to art. But that reduction is only incidental. I object to the whole reduction idea…if my work is reductionist it’s because it doesn’t have the elements that people thought should be there. But it has other elements I like.