Two Lost Donald Judd Interviews, Part II: On Color and Defining ‘Modernism’

Earlier this summer, when we happened to come across not one but two vibrant, late-'80s interviews with Donald Judd in the same week, we decided it was fate telling us to designate today Judd day here on the site, where we'd excerpt text from both. The second interview we're posting today comes from New York New Art, a 1989 tome that Monica unearthed at an antique mall in Nashville. The interview, with John Griffiths, took place at a Judd exhibition where the artist was showing new pieces in metal and perspex. It covers everything from why Judd began using color to whether the term "Modernism" actually means anything. Read on for more after the jump!

12.23.13

Excerpt: Magazine

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Lost Interview with Ettore Sottsass, From Surface Magazine

It's no secret that we're devotees of the work of the late Italian design legend Ettore Sottsass, but to the extent that everyone we know has been caught up lately in the more superficial elements of his influence — the post-modernist colors, patterns, and geometries — we jumped at the chance to share with you this reminder of his intellectual legacy: one of several previously unpublished interviews with Sottsass conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2001. It was given to us as a little holiday present by Surface magazine's new editor Spencer Bailey, who oversaw its inclusion in the Dec/Jan Art Issue, which was co-edited by ForYourArt founder Bettina Korek and is the fourth since Surface was redesigned and reimagined this past July. Says Bailey: "Last fall, I was talking with Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist over dinner in London about his unpublished interviews with artists and designers. He mentioned that he has several with Ettore Sottsass, so I asked him to send them to me. This one in particular blew me away. Hans Ulrich is a master interviewer, and Sottsass is, well, Sottsass. When I was putting together Surface's first annual Art Issue, I just knew I had to publish it." Sight Unseen is the only place on the web you can read the entire edited interview as it ran in the magazine — check it out after the jump, including images added by us, and don't forget to subscribe to Surface when you're done!

01.18.11

Sighted

Raw Edges in the V&A’s “Couples Counseling” Video Series

When it comes to the issues explored in the Victoria & Albert museum’s video series “Couples Counseling," which probes the relationships behind five London design duos, Raw Edges’s Yael Maer sums things up handily: “Working and living together — it’s a very problematic issue,” she says with a loaded smile. Adds partner Shay Alkalay: “We have to find a way to separate personal life and professional life,” before making it clear over the course of the subsequent seven-minute interview that the couple have managed to do no such thing. But although all five of the partnerships profiled — including FredriksonStallard and Pinch Design — admit that mixing love and professional collaboration brings its fair share of challenges, in the end the viewer understands that what gives their work its strength is the depth of character that results when a person’s greatest admirer is also his or her toughest critic.

10.18.10

Sighted

MVM interviews David Shrigley

Sighted on Robot shop's website: Norwegian graphic designer Magnus Voll Mathiassen and Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley have an open-ended discussion about art, illustration, Lou Reed, rulers, and art versus branding. Of the latter, Shrigley says: "I sometimes think of my work as always the same, but then at the same time always different. It's the same aesthetic and maybe the same attitude, but (then) if there wasn't something different in there; if there wasn't some kind of surprise each time, I would probably stop doing it."

05.07.10

An Afternoon With

Finding Utopia in Kreuzberg with Designer Jerszy Seymour

Last summer I spent the month of June living and working in Berlin, which is also the home base of the designer Jerszy Seymour. Right-hand man to Vitra and Magis and inventor of the amorphous conceptual building material Scum, he'd just had his busiest year ever — mounting five exhibitions on his way to being guest of honor at the Design Parade festival in Hyères, France, with a monograph to follow. Having already known him from previous projects, I convinced him to spend the day with me discussing his Coalition of Amateurs project, the subject of all those shows; he offered to take me to Nowhere Land, which turned out to be an overgrown meadow just north of the hipster enclave Kreuzberg.