Moving in the image

Under the spotlights at Tate Modern in 2004, the kaleidoscopic qualities of Donald Judd’s works are startling. They are crystalline, reflective, rhythmic and fluid. The same pieces are less psychedelic in the diffuse natural light of the Kunstmuseum Basel. Comparing the two presentations, the reason for Judd’s anxiety about gallery lighting becomes clear. His own preference was for natural light – he complained that spotlights generated vivid reflections that destroyed the subtleties of the works. Even in natural light, however, the appearance and movement of varying reflections along the surfaces of Judd’s works is a compelling feature. The curvilinear elements of his wall progressions distort reflected viewers like funfair mirrors, while the rectilinear elements allow the viewer intermittent glimpses of his or her own bodily movements, arrayed in a Muybridge-like strip. The tops of his Plexiglas boxes are like still pools of reflecting water – tinted images of passing viewers glide across their surfaces. To see one’s own reflection on the move is a surprising sight, particularly in an art gallery, where reflections usually mirror a static viewer in contemplation. There is a sense of excess or plenitude of reflection here, as these moving images acquire a kind of autonomy. The intriguing interplay between Judd’s sequential sculptural forms and mobile optical effects suggests a filmic analogy, though for anyone familiar with Judd’s writings this reading might be considered risky. Describing Judd’s objects as ‘filmic’ is to move outside his own terminology; such an association appears inimical to his passionate call for ‘specificity’. Yet the unexpected apparition of moving images and makeshift ‘screens’ in Judd’s works seem structurally significant and philosophically interesting. How far can this association with the ‘filmic’ be sustained on a formal level, I wonder, and can it offer a new and productive perspective on Judd’s practice and the discourses that surrounded it?