The Story Behind Donald Judd's Iconic Chair 84 Design

It was 1982 in the remote desert town of Marfa, Texas, and Rainer and Flavin Judd, daughter and son of artist Donald Judd, had just moved into rooms of their own. Don, as they call him, made each of them a desk, but as Flavin explains, “Once you have a desk, you need a chair—a place to sit and do your homework.” In no time, their father sketched one (actually, there were 10 variations) and took the plans to a carpenter to have seats hewn in pine from a lumberyard.

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RG @patrickli__ “Donald Judd’s iconic forward slant chair in black plywood is in stock and ready to ship.” #juddfurniture #christmasiscoming

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The design couldn’t have been simpler, made entirely from flat pine boards. But in that cubic volume beneath the seat, the artist experimented: In one version he placed a shelf, in another a slanting board; another was solid on the front but recessed on the sides.

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This weekend is your last chance to see the exhibition, Donald Judd: Specific Furniture, on view at @sfmoma ‪through November 4. The exhibition brings together both Donald Judd’s furniture and drawings along with a selection of pieces he collected and lived with in his homes and studios. In his essay from 1993, “It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp,” Judd stated, “The configuration and the scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional. If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous. The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness, and scale as a chair. These are proportion, which is visible reasonableness.” Image: installation shot of ‘Donald Judd: Specific Furniture’ courtesy @sfmoma/Katherine Du Tiel #donaldjudd #specificfurniture #sfmoma

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Soon the chair showed up in several of Judd’s homes, newly documented in Donald Judd Spaces, which is published this month by Judd Foundation and DelMonico Books/Prestel. A group gathered at La Mansana de Chinati, in Marfa, and 14 surrounded the dining table in his SoHo loft. In 1991, Judd began realising them in plywood, for which a range of colours could be specified, and several of those punctuated his Architecture Office in Marfa. Only in 1993, when the chairs were numbered in an exhibition catalogue for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, did they get an official name: Chair 84.

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regram @juddfoundation #juddfurniture “Color is like material. It is one way or another, but it obdurately exists. Its existence as it is is the main fact and not what it might mean, which may be nothing. Or rather, color does not connect alone to any of the several states of the mind. I mention the word "epistemology" and stop. Color, like material, is what art is made from. It alone is not art. Itten confused the components with the whole. Other than the spectrum, there is no pure color. It always occurs on a surface which has no texture or which has a texture or which is beneath a transparent surface.” - Donald Judd, Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular, 1993 #donaldjudd 📸 @solhashemi

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While the seat might bear some resemblance to his sculptures, Judd was always clear: This was a chair, not art. “A work of art exists as itself,” he wrote in 1986. “A chair exists as a chair itself.” Still, for decades collectors have snapped up the designs, old and new (from $3,500 through Donald Judd Furniture). “People recognize the honesty behind his work,” says Manhattan dealer Cristina Grajales, who has sold several Judd furnishings. “With Chair 84 he gets to the essence of design. It’s about lines and functionality.” Accordingly, in Judd, a retrospective opening at New York’s MoMA this month, the furniture sits outside the exhibition proper, in a sixth-floor communal reading room, where, just as the artist intended, it can be put to good use. Visit judd.furniture for more.

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Bed #32 #donaldjudd #juddfurniture

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This article originally appeared on Architectural Digest.