“Color and space occur together.”

—Donald Judd

Donald Judd’s mature practice of the 1980s marked a period of profound experimentation, in which the artist returned to many of the core principles of his career to push them into bold new territory. Upending conventional notions of sculpture since the 1960s, Judd’s “specific objects” were dedicated to an essential lexicon of forms which abandoned the pedestal and distilled art-making to the fundamental conditions of material, space, and color. His focus on the autonomy of the artwork led him to his recognition among the leading figures of Minimalism—a term he repeatedly renounced, even as it recognized his commitment to the elemental nature of perception. The present work, executed in 1981, gives form to these inquiries through a bisected copper box lined with luminous blue Plexiglas: an evolution of his iconic “meter box” structure that explored new spatial and chromatic relationships. Reflecting Judd’s readiness to embrace new formal possibilities, Untitled highlights a pivotal evolution in his approach to materiality and opticality which would shape the rest of his oeuvre.

 “The work is done by one man, José Otero. He knows how to make them well, how I originally wanted them, and they continue to get done in that way, and that all depends on José Otero. It’s just this one guy, and that’s kind of lucky.”

—Donald Judd

With its media drawn from manufacturing contexts far removed from traditional artmaking, the present work exemplifies Judd’s sustained engagement with industrial substances and processes as central to his sculptural language. The warm, reflective copper and ultramarine blue acrylic were chosen by the artist not for any symbolic content but for their specific visual and tactile properties. The smooth surfaces and perfect finish of these materials manifest Judd’s ambition to eliminate the trace of the artist’s hand and emulate the neutrality of the factory line. Beginning in 1964 and lasting the rest of his life, the artist developed a close working partnership with the Bernstein Brothers, a family-owned roofing and ventilation shop located a few blocks from Judd’s studio in Manhattan. Over time, the firm became chiefly responsible for his metal fabrications, with Judd placing particular trust in their technician José Otero, whose initials “JO” are stamped on the reverse of Untitled. Their relationship was deeply collaborative: Judd would deliver conceptual sketches indicating form, color, and materials, which Otero would then then translate into precise, structurally efficient constructions, the simplicity of which belies what Ed Bernstein once described as their “mind-boggling” complexity.ⁱ In Untitled, this synthesis of factory materials and meticulous fabrication enabled Judd to transform utilitarian objects like copper and Plexiglas into a compelling visual experience.

The relationship between these materials creates a dynamic interplay of dimensionality and surface, underscoring Judd’s primary interest in perception and materiality. Among the artist’s preferred structures, the box was regarded by Judd as neutral—devoid of symbolism or metaphor—and therefore served as an ideal vessel for exploring spatial relationships. In works such as Untitled, he used the box to interrogate the optical contrast between a solid, weighty metal exterior with a lightweight acrylic interior. “The box with the Plexiglas inside is an attempt to make a definite second surface. The inside is radically different from the outside,” Judd elucidated.ⁱⁱ “While the outside is definite and rigorous, the inside is indefinite. The interior appears to be larger than the exterior.”ⁱⁱⁱ In the 1980s, Judd began to subdivide his boxes into smaller units, as seen in this piece, further emphasizing his evolving interest in how space could be divided, contained, and experienced. His newfound use of these contrasting materials and spatial configurations reinforced the Minimalist pursuit of prioritizing physical presence and direct sensory experience.

The opaque Plexiglas also imparts to Untitled a striking yet measured use of color, one that foreshadowed the broader range of hues Judd would adopt later in the 1980s. Offering a uniformity and saturation that paint could not achieve, the material possesses an intrinsic hue—color that is not applied but embedded throughout. As Dietmar Elger observed, “almost more than any other materials, Plexiglas lived up to Judd’s stipulation that material and color should form a single entity, for color is truly inherent in Plexiglas.”^iv Judd’s predilection for primary colors, including the present use of blue, resonated with his emphasis on clarity and perceptual immediacy, while the contrast of the acrylic with the warm, metallic copper generates a heightened awareness of surface, temperature, and tone. Plexiglas enabled Judd to integrate color directly into the work's physical form, making chromatic experience inseparable from the work’s material presence.

 “You see the thing about my work is that it is a given.”

—Donald Judd

Mounted on the wall like a painting yet intruding into the viewer’s space, Judd’s meter boxes radically redefined the nature of the three-dimensional form. His practice focused the viewer’s attention on the objecthood of art through works that articulate space as both material fact and visual event. Untitled, then, becomes a site where the viewer is invited to reconsider the boundaries of sculpture, where the materiality of the object and the experience of space converge into a singular, transformative encounter. Representing a critical moment in Judd’s practice, it marks a re-examination of the core formal and conceptual strategies which drove his remarkable body of work.

ⁱ Ed Bernstein, quoted in Ann Temkin, “Wear and Care: Preserving Judd,” Artforum, Summer 2004, p. 207.
ⁱⁱ Donald Judd, quoted in Donald Judd: Selected Works 1960-1991, Saitama, 1999, p. 162.
ⁱⁱⁱ Donald Judd, quoted in ibid.
^iv Dietmar Elger, “Introduction (to Don Judd, colorist),” in Donald Judd: Colorist, Hannover, 2000, p. 21.