DRAWING IN MARFA

Drawing in Marfa is a humbling experience. The effect of experiencing everything Judd is nearly overwhelming. The unremitting near nothingness of Judd’s work has the effect of cleaning out your mind. And then you try to access this infinite nothingness in a drawing. I tell you, it is humbling.

Marfa, Texas, is, of course, an arts mecca. Donald Judd put Marfa on the arts map with his Chinati Foundation and the Judd Foundation. The last time we got on a plane was in early March with the principal goal of seeing Marfa. When there, we saw his residence, his downtown studio (with his drawings, principally of buildings he designed, on the walls), other negative space installations, and the Chinati tesselations.

Why Judd did what he did in Texas has been written about and written about. What came thru for us was the absolute focus of one brain on a set of very infinite concepts. That focus was evident in where he lived, how he lived, where and how he worked, and what was produced from all of that. Where else is the holistic integration of one person’s life and work nearly indistinguishable? Possibly Wright at Taliessen. The Infinite Nothingness melds into a single mind state.

So all I could do was Line Without Tone. Hell, most of Judd’s drawings are simple line diagrams. And all I could think to do was to draw boxes on top of boxes, in a straight Form Combine with no improvisation.