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Robert Smithson

UNTITLED

Time no longer originates outside of Don Judd's
"objects", but is contained in them. By excluding the illusion of pictorial space Judd has made time apphysical element, and shows that "the one" is "the many". Dualism leads to infinite "progression". Judd has fabricated such progressions, an example of such a progression is selected from L. B. W. Jolley's Summation of Series:

1 - 1/2 + 1/3 - 1/4 + 1/5 - 1/6 + 1/7 - 1/8 + 1/9 - 1/10

This progression determined the scale of one of Judd's objects. The "square bar" that connects Judd's separate modules maintains a precarious equilibrium. It's "structure" is more obvious to the mind than the eye. It lacks any dominant element, except the dualism between the bar and the modules. This order is unstable, and the slightest physical movement might mean its destruction. Judd isn't interested in any monist 
notion of absolute space, rather his art challenges space to the point of actually removing it. The disruption in this art is physical and introduces a sense of discord into "the whole", everything threatens to fall apart. The perfection of the scheme destroys its own perfection. Unresolved tensions seem premediated, the mind's eye struggles to make something out if its anti-directional presence. The art affirms not the "solid", but the "hollow" without any composed climaxes. Time is blocked out in both mind and actuality without any illusionistic link. No apparent rules govern these objects that defy simple unification. Their apparent common-sense seems to be a trap. They don't belong anywhere. They are mathematical metaphors that disclose the physical dimensions of "nothing". Common-sense "conceits" that never seem right or wrong. Everywhere simplicity is undermined by intricacy, clarty [[clarity]] undermined by complexity, and order undermined by tension. By abstraction regressive time notions into solid or specific objects, the "uncanny" mood of unavailable pasts and entropic futures come to ind [[mind]]. Time's direction becomes a progression, within a terminal shape that is immbile [[immobile]]. The gaze of the eye cannot hold to the limits of te [[the]] pattern is "unreadable". The thinking behind the object is unknown. For a "split-second" all time otions [[options]] seem stable, but one's memory is soon abolished by the obect [[object]]. The past, present,