Donald Judd talks about how 'new three-dimensional work' was interesting unlike painting and sculpture. He spoke of painting as being a rectangle plain with restriction on the work added to it because of the boundaries. He spoke of his work as not being a painting or a sculpture.

He saw three dimensions as being real space, taking away illusions and marks of colour, three dimensional space made his work have meaning.  This is true in the fact, that he was so considered in everything that he did.  He measured everything, distances were to be equal, lines to to be inline, volumes were to match, or any variation in them was a measured purposeful reason. Precision was a must, everything he did had be accounted for.  The materials he used, a lot of which were industrial materials; stainless steel, concrete, plywood, brass, galvanised iron, where used with a purpose, an ending. His work worked within a space, the space was part of his work and space itself was also physiically measured.  It was just as important as the piece within it.  

In Marfa you can really get to see what Judd was doing. Especially in the outbuildings and the grounds that he purchased, where he laid out his work. The objects are measured and reproduced, laid out in rows and spaced out systematically. The repetition adding to the space, giving the viewer an ongoing, never ending powerful experience.

Robert Ryman describes his work as a realist.  He says how others artists work is an illusion, where as his work..

'the painting I make is based on a different approach. It has to do with using real light on real surfaces, rather than creating an internal illusion of light. If I use line in my work it is to do with line itself, not line as a representation of something else.I think of this as working with an outward aesthetic rather than with an inward one. I work with the painting plane in relation to the wall plane.  Everything points to an approach which is a real situation rather than an illusion of the kind you get in pictures. I also have to consider the way light works. In most painting we think of light in terms of an illusion within the picture. In my painting light is used differently without any illusion. Thie light in the painting, so to speak, is accomplished by the different surfaces and how real light acts upon those surfaces.  In some cases the surfaces are very soft and quiet and absorb the light; in others, light is reflected off certain parts of the painting, or off the fasteners, while it is absorbed in other parts.' 

I think Robert Ryman is saying how the combination of the surface, the paint, and where it sits are all as important as each-other. How every application is put down with him already knowing the final outcome. That the combination of all materials used including the background have to work together, the colour, the surface, the texture, will all soak up or reflect light in a different way, and this is what his art work is. It is an extension of the wall it sits on and his final piece works with the light to give you what you see. He also paints squares and I'm sure this is because a square is quite neutral also.  

I am not quite clear on his thoughts of other artists, but from what he is saying, it appears to me that he feels that his approach is not used by many artists.  He says how Mondrian did take care about his work and how it related to the walls it sat on, and how he liked to use shallow stepped frames. 

Robert Rymans use of white was also discussed and he says that over time white began to take over. I think he sees white as being something that other colours can not. That with white you can look deeply into it, and that the eye will pick things up in white, that may get lost in colours. It is also a great reactor to light and will not absorb light as much as other colours, but will encourage light to bounce.  

His work you can see over the years has evolved, but in a very subtle way there is not the contrasts disciplines as the likes of Picasso.

John Berger writes how the invention of the camera has now made it possible for pieces of art work to be photographed and reproduced so that it is accessible by everyone. He says that this takes away from how the artwork should be viewed, that it removes it from its initial surroundings.  If a piece of artwork is photographed, it can reappear in a book, a magazine, on the television, that it can be zoomed into, cropped. That the meaning of the image can be changed due to what you can now see beside it, or what you have seen just before it. That if you are looking at a piece of art on a television screen, that the TV screen, the colour of the painted walls or wallpaper around the TV and the floor that it sits on, now become all contributing factors to how you perceive this piece of art. That the sounds you can hear around you are also interfering with what your interepreation is of this image.

He also goes onto say that your experiences in life are an influence on how you interact with a piece of art also, that different people will read different things into it. That your beliefs, your emotions, will translate into your thoughts of the art you are looking at.

I think he believes that none of this is necessary a bad thing, but it does need to be acknowledged and understood.  When you see a piece of art, something has been taken away from the experience of seeing the original artwork in its natural surroundings. That something has been added, that wasn't necessarily the intention and so the piece of artwork is not how it was intended to be viewed.

He concludes that the art of the past no longer exists as it once did.

Katharina Grosse interview with Angela Rosenberg talks about her connections to American Color Field painting and her latest project for the Quadriennale in Düsseldorf.

The interview covers how Grosse does not create art by painting on canvas, but works within the environment and space to transform it into something else, by using colour and 3d forms.

I liked her thinking about Land Art., and how Robert Smithson was an early inspiration.  How by painting landscapes she didn't see things in perspective or how objects outside would relate to each other.  To her, they all became one, there was no separation no focal point. 

As Grosse said herself.

'all elements can be interwoven with all others into an event that can be continued indefinitely' 

Her work is vast, and takes over areas, it becomes a mass of colour that drapes or fills a room in chunks.  In a way, it's as if every thing in that space, has been put into a melting pot, and has turned into separated primary colours.

The four ellipses that Grosse did for her show Shadowbox at Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin was made up of four huge shapes that she spray painted and cut out shapes.

Her intention was-

'to open up a performative space of thought in which everyone can perceive reality in a different way: without notions of good and evil, without hierarchies and borders.” The “shadowbox” is an open system. “Painting, thinking and acting in it means that there is no longer a reality that is more real than potentiality. Reality is thus updated in the possibilities of each individual at all times.'

I do liked the idea that you can walk around the sculptures and look out the shaped cut outs/windows to to give a different angle and perspective on the other sculptures within the room.

One of these sculptures became an outdoor project  and used as part of the interior for the Düsseldorf Johanneskirche church.  I like the way it becomes an extension of the church, and brings a very old building inline with the 21st century.