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plane placed flat against the wall, "he stated, simply wiping out much of the history of pictures. By focusing on sculptures having been "made part by part, by addition, composed, " he also wrote off the tradition of three-dimensional imagery. Judd suggested how art could be less generalized. " In the new work," he pointed out, "the shape, image, color and surface are single and not partial and scattered." "The use of three-dimensions," he added, "makes it possible to use all sorts of material and colors." The virtues he praised——read "shape, unit, protection, order, and color"——would communicate by being "specific, aggressive and powerful."

In the 12 years since Specific Objects initially appeared, it has aged into as historic a document as something like Alberti's 1430s treatise De Statua (that perhaps equally youthful consideration of the properties of sculpture). How and why new art should be made seems communicated by both. Judd's call-to-arms actually echoed similar sentiments expressed by Ibram Lassaw 27 years earlier when he too maintained (in the American Abstract Artists' Yearbook) that "crystalized concepts of the terms 'sculpture and 'painting' are dissolving." And like Judd, the then 25-year-old Lassaw found "colors an d forms alone have a greater power to move man emotionally and psychologically. "He knew "certain artists" who, as early as 1938, had already "abandoned traditional pigment painting and solid, static sculpture." "The new attitude that is being formed as a result of these searches is concerned with the invention of objects.... The artist no longer feels that he is representing reality, 'he is actually making reality." Well, the more things change, the more they remain the same, for Lassaw also maintained, "we must make originals." "A work of art must work." he concluded.

Lassaw was 52 years old when "Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors" was on view. He, is immediate predecessors, and his contemporaries had just represented "Etats-Unis: Sculptures du XXe Siècle" at the Musée Rodin in Paris during 1965. Artists like Ferber, Flannagan, Hague, Lachaise, Lipton, Nadelman, Nakian, Rickey, de Rivera, Zogbaum and others, however, were elder statesmen without a home base. The art world, mirroring the wolrd in general, was communing exclusively with its junior generation, The Beatles, Hair, Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Easy Rider, Wild in the Streets, college smoke-ins, college teach-ins; demonstrations against R.O.T.C., DOw Chemical, white oppressors, slumlords, and the Vietnam war: the middle and the late '60s were filled with elation and rage. Change was sought and celebrated. But Minimalism——not Pop art——could effect the most significant turnover in the art world since Abstract Expressionism because it had more than a "look:" it had a "style," one which had been festering for quite some time and which, when finally displayed full force, was peaking. Perhaps the most significant word in the title of the Jewish Museum exhibition has been heretofore overlooked: "Younger." In April of 1966 Judd and LeWitt were both 38; Flavin was 33; Andre, 30.

It has become standard practice for museums to print significant dates in artists' lives in exhibition catalogues. The Judd entry in Kynaston Mcshine's souvenir book noted that the sculptor was born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri in 1928; served in the United States Army in Korea, 1945-47; attended the College of William and Mary, 1948-49, Columbia University, 1949-53 (B.S. in Philosophy) and 1958-60 ("fine arts." now art history) and the Art Students League, 1947-53. It was also mentioned that he had been writing reviews and articles for art publications since 1959. Robert Morris' paragraph in the same publication included——"Born in Kansas City; Kansas City Art Institute; California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco; Reed college, Portland, Oregon. Graduate work at Hunter College, New York City. Has participated in several dance events here and in Europe. Has also created several dance events here and in Europe. Has also created several dance pieces and written on the dance." This undigested material at least informed interested parties that both artists grew up in the same area of the country at roughly the same time; both studied at universities and at art schools, pursued graduate education, and published professional criticism. Still , what relevance does this have to their art? Actually, details from their biographies that are now publicly accessible suggest that it is more important than might be suspected.

Although Judd's family moved several times during his youth——to Omaha, Kansas City, and Des Moines——he spent the greater part of his childhood, as Morris did, in the hotbed of Regional Art during its heyday. If both Judd and Morris were later to rebel against Abstract Expressionism, their first schoolroom instructors were versed in the art of Curry, Benton, and Wood. In 1938 Judd took his first private art lessons in Omaha; that same year, Morris attended sessions at the Nelson Art Gallery. Judd remembers designing a war bonds poster as a class assignment in 1939, when Morris was painting a school mural. In the early '40s, the Judd family moved East; during the mid-'40s. Morris briefly travelled West (he did not stay, but he would when he was older). In 1946, Judd was stationed in Korea in an engineers unit just before the outbreak of the next war. Morris also served time in Korea in an engineers unit, toward the end of that war. Both, in other words, were exposed first-hand to Oriental culture. Judd's paintings had simple forms and few colors; Morris' did, too. Judd, after studying philosophy, moved to New York and studied for his master's degree at Hunter College. Bothe men married dancers. Each held his first one-person show during 1957 and exhibited for the first time at the Green Gallery in 1963. They both soon became critics who were widely read. When old last summer how closely certain episodes in his life paralleled Morris', Judd was surprised; he had not known any of this. Still, their parallel experiences during the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and early '60s probably were significant for 20th-century art as the actual exchanges of Picasso and Braque or Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. Without knowing one another, they could simultaneously arrive at strikingly similar stances, perhaps because they had so much in common.

At the beginning of the '60s Andre, Flavin, Judd, and LeWitt were a few years away from realizing their signature styles. And while they were floundering, they earned their livings outside their studios. Judd

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Donald Judd, Untitled, 1966, galvanized iron and aluminum, 40 x 190 x 40".