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Robert Smithson

-4-

Space in Judd's art seems to belong to an order of increasing hardness, not unlike geological formations. He has put space down in the form of deposits. Such deposits come from his mind rather than nature. Instead of bringing Christ down from the cross, the way the painters of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Mannerist periods did in their many versions of The Deposition, Judd has brought space down into an abstract world of mineral forms. He is involved in what could be called, "The Deposition of Infinite Space". Time has many anthropomorphic representations, such as Father Time, but space has none. There is no Mother Space or Father Space. Space is nothing, yet we all have a kind of vague faith in it. What seems so solid and final in Judd's work is at the same time elusive and brittle.

Judd's sensibility encompasses geology, metallurgy, mineralogy, among others. He has an excellent collection of geologic maps, which he scans from time to time, not for their intended content, but for their exquisite structural precision. His own writing style has much in common with the terse, factual descriptions one finds in his collection of geology books. Compare this passage from one of his books, The Geology of Jackson County, Missouri to his own criticism: "The interval between the Cement City and the Raytown limestones varies from 10 to 23 feet. The lower three-quarters is an irregularly colored green, blue, red, and yellow shale which at some places contains calcareous concretions. Usually the red shale occurs [[strikethrough]] in [[/strikethrough]] with an irregular band through the middle, dividing an upper blue from a lower green and buff shale.". And now an excerpt from Judd's review of Dan Flavin's first one-man show: "The light is bluntly and awkwardly stuck on the square block; it protrudes awkwardly. The red in the green attached to a lighter green is odd as color, and as a sequence. The upper right corner of a block painted Mars black is truncated at an oblique angle. A short daylight-white fluoriscent [[fluorescent ]] tube is mounted on the facet."