Donald Judd Loft Update

Courtesy Judd Foundation © James Ewsing

I developed my blog entry on the opening of Donald Judd's loft to guided tours for the travel section of the El País newspaper.  It appeared on July 5th with the title Minimalismo al máximo. You can read it in full here (in Spanish).

"La cocina parece propia de una granja de Misuri, donde Judd nació en 1928. Al final de su vida, Nueva York le resultó demasiado pequeña, y volcó sus energías en transformar Marfa, un pueblo deshabitado de Texas, en su instalación permanente más ambiciosa, abarrotando sus casas y edificios con sus colecciones de muebles y con obras de arte concebidas para esos espacios por él mismo y sus invitados. Su modesta casa de Nueva York le sirvió como ensayo general para ese gran proyecto: un trozo del Lejano Oeste en el centro de la gran manzana."

Minimalismo al máximo
Donald Judd loft, 101 Spring Street, NY
El País, Friday July 5, 2013
Section El Viajero, Number 766, page 12

Donald Judd: The Birth of the Loft

Dining table. © Joshua White / Judd Foundation

One of the formative experiences of my student years or shortly thereafter was a visit to this building when Judd was still around (though mostly in Marfa then), thanks to Ron Bentley and Sal LaRosa and their friend and teacher, the late Lauretta Vinciarelli. (Sal introduced us to everything about downtown New York in those years). There was the cargo lift, and every floor was an open space dedicated to a single use, from the bedroom on top down to the living room and the country-style kitchen, organized around an enormous oak table.

Each floor was so down to nothing that the stereo and speakers were on the floor, with cables snaking about, and the bed too, on a low platform. The ground floor was a dusty private gallery that you could gawk at from the street. Every floor was about that run of windows on one side, leading you from the back, where the stairs and elevator were, into the space.

There was a memorable New Yorker cover with a drawing of the building in those years, which I saved. It caught the spirit of the building then better than the exterior shots I've seen recently:

The New Yorker, October 13, 1980

Read about the restoration of Judd's building here:

 Alice Rawsthorne
"Donald Judd and the Art of Living"
The New York Times, June 2, 2013

James S. Russell
"Donald Judd’s SoHo Loft Opens After $23 Million Makeover"
Bloomberg, June 1, 2013

Cifflord A. Pearson
"Judd Home and Studio"
Architectural Record, May 2013

Alexandra Lange
"Donald Judd's House"
The New Yorker Culture Desk, May 13. 2013

New Yorker cover courtesy http://cover.browser.com  

The Judd Foundation 

Update
See my blog entry of July 28th for my own story on the building published in El País, Minimalismo al máximo.