Architecture, art and their relationship in Donald Judd's Artillery Sheds and 100 untitled works in mill aluminium

This paper revisits Donald Judd’s Artillery Sheds and 100 untitled works in mill aluminium (1979–1986) at the Chinati Foundation / la Fundación Chinati in Marfa, Texas, arguing that it constitutes one case study that includes both architecture and art, with contributions that remain unaddressed. Concerned with the analytical frameworks used in existing analyses to speak about the case’s decisions and their significances, this paper, supported by fieldwork and archival research, explores and extends upon different analytical frameworks than those present in the case’s existing scholarship, including those closer to Judd himself and other literature on Judd not yet directly related to this work. These frameworks contribute to building an alternative context of understanding, allowing for a reconsideration of how architecture, art and their relationship are realised in this particular work, as well as an exploration of what the work can contribute to architectural approaches. Unlike other analyses of this case, this leads to an account of the work as architecturally a museum of sorts, a further elaboration of Judd’s notion of polarity and as an example of an inclusive application of abstraction that avoids the limits of intermediary representational knowledge.