Waiting for the Biography

Posted on October 12, 2010 2:00 pm

Carla and I first visited Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa back in the ’80s. The combined experience of the West Texas high desert landscape (“The Big Empty”), the former U.S. Army fort that Judd acquired to house his art, the art itself, the town, and the blanket of stars above, is unlike anything anywhere else. We were immediately hooked, and remain so. There are two books being released this month that look to be must-haves: Chinati: The Vision of Donald Judd, by Marianne Stockebrand, the longtime director of the Chinati Foundation; and Donald Judd: Specifics, by David Raskin, which is, remarkably, the first major monograph devoted to Judd. As tasty as these books appear to be, the one Carla and I long for is an unauthorized biography of Judd. Man-oh-man, the stories we hear from the locals and long-timers… Could be a great miniseries. Or perhaps a sequel to Giant.