Donald Judd, Studio Visit, Marfa

This is an excerpt from an email I sent a friend hours after visiting the Donald Judd studios and home in Marfa, Texas.

… I knew he was a minimalist, but I didn’t realise he was also a collector. Very OCD, but there was a looseness is his gatherings, in the way he allowed his spaces to host each collection for the utmost enjoyment. He had made the surrounding walls to his property perfectly level, but the inside wall structure was left to fall flush to the land, on a gentle slope. The two walls complimenting each other with their own history and considerations. The square revolving doors to his studio pivoted at the centre, making a hard-edged and heavy object appear circular and light with its ease of movement. I could have watched that move for hours. He had made his bookshelves to the height of standard wood lengths, six shelves high, deep and long, covered in books from the science of architecture, to mathematics, indigenous culture, history and art.

His kitchen was my favourite. The wooden island made from three half lengths of wood allowed for small cracks between each panel, just wide enough to let his knives slot in – again, everything came back to functionality. Music and booze were a priority, a day-bed in every room. His consideration to the entrance, the light, the materials and their reflective surfaces (or non reflective surfaces) and the play of the two combined, colour and lack thereof – the whole combination blew my mind.

Oh, and one more thing to add, he wrote his notes on square-ruled paper.