From Black Square to Room Square

Abstract

Fried’s assertion that Constructivism was a source for Minimalism is supplemented by Donald Judd’s interest in Suprematism. By reading Judd’s review of Kazimir Malevich’s 1973 exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum, this article locates similarity between the two artists’ fascination with painting’s inbuilt objectness that drove them into three-dimensional art. Judd’s reading of Malevich’s work that the author supplements with her own historical analysis reveals that Fried’s characterizations of Minimalism as theatrical, reliant on a viewer, and not interested in ritualizing a single painting, was accurate. Another theme of this article is Judd’s realization – shortly before his death – that damaged Soviet objecthood, a leftover of the Suprematist Utopia, was an antithetical partner to ‘Specific Objects’.