“I am very interested in the materials as materials, for themselves, for the qualities they have, and retaining that quality, not losing it.” Donald Judd, 1989

Perhaps the most renowned master of minimalist form, Donald Judd’s innovative vision of the interplay of color and light in industrial material transformed traditionally held theories of the abstract. Renouncing the label of the minimalist school, Judd’s endeavor to reimagine the two-dimensional canvas in a simple yet commanding aesthetic was beholden to the evolving dialogue between the spatial relationships of constituent elements and the colorful media in which his artistic objective was realized. Untitled (Bernstein 81-4) from 1981 is but the material manifestation of these otherwise painterly concerns – a monument to spectral beauty reflected in the mechanical yet ethereal composition of the Bernstein box.

Approaching the creation of his wall boxes with careful subtlety in the phrasings of proportion and interior space, Judd refused to imbue his materials with meaning beyond their elemental force. Speaking to his concern with the adaptation of the flat medium to the sculptural, in his seminal 1965 essay “Specific Objects,” the artist noted, “The new work exceeds painting in plain power, but power isn't the only consideration, though the difference between it and expression can't be too great either. There are other ways than power and form in which one kind of art can be more or less than another…” (in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965) In conflating the spatial illusionism of color and form, Judd articulated a powerful commentary on the future of contemporary art, anticipating both the incorporation and reinterpretation of industrial and found materials, and their power as singular instruments in the orchestra of the artistic composition.

Refuting the representational aspects of the industrial media he employed, Judd’s early adoption of sheet aluminum – a medium then new to the artistic community – was in direct relation to his belief that the material and spatial whole were created in tandem with a temporal and psychological dimension integral to the abstract idiom. Dissolving the symbolic intent of line and color, Judd, in Untitled (Bernstein 81-4), elaborated upon what he perceived as the limited spatial realization of the canvas: “Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another….It's possible that not much can be done with both an upright rectangular plane and an absence of space. Anything on a surface has space behind it. Two colors on the same surface almost always lie on different depths.” (“Specific Objects,” in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965) In Untitled (Bernstein 81-4), Judd extends his understanding of the industrial medium, incorporating unusually opulent copper sheets in a warm, radiating marriage of the bronze patina and its embrace of a singular sheet of royal blue Plexiglas.

Judd’s selection of the copper box, rather than his typical aluminum sheets, utilized in the four Bernstein boxes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, also from 1981, illustrates the artist’s willingness to experiment with the form and function of his industrial materials and the resulting simple yet spectral beauty. In an interview with John Coplans, Judd carefully explained his exploration of various media:

The box with the plexiglas inside is an attempt to make a definite second surface. The inside is radically different from the outside. While the outside is definite and rigorous, the inside is indefinite. The interior appears to be larger than the exterior. The plastic is very slippery in look….But I like to try other things to see what happens to the shape and surface. Also, I like to try different colors on the same form by using different materials. (Donald Judd: Selected Works 1960-1991, exhibition catalogue, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama and The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, 1999, p. 162)

Capturing the infinite in seemingly finite, linear form, Judd elevates his industrial sheets and sharp, geometric edges to a visual monument to the transcendent power of precision in the dissolution of form. Angular in structure, the interplay of this Bernstein’s burnt umber and cobalt elements refract a new light, creating a fourth dimension of the illusory pictorial plane.

Sliced and divided by Judd’s central copper panel, angled to create optically enticing, depth-defying spatial fields, Untitled (Bernstein 81-4) is a bold and beautiful embodiment of the artist’s most enduring theoretical concerns – namely, the ability of his manufactured shape and color to generate light and space. Unequivocally modern and unapologetically conceptual, Judd’s theorization of art as the intangible is perhaps best reflected in these copper works; the rich, almost jewel-like copper patina only enhances our understanding of his simultaneously concrete and ephemeral work. In Untitled (Bernstein 81-4), Judd’s definite visual object is subsumed by the apparitional aesthetic, where color and medium diffuse form in a poetic manifestation of the illusory experience.