Creativity Quote by Donald Judd

Judd’s line slices straight through the romance of the artist-as-tortured-producer and lands on a cooler, more radical claim: labor is incidental; the object is sovereign. Coming from a figure who helped define Minimalism, it’s not a motivational quip about “working smarter.” It’s a discipline statement, almost a refusal. Judd distrusted the expressive theatrics of Abstract Expressionism and the idea that brushwork should function like a personality test. “The work” evokes the whole sanctified backstage economy: process photos, studio myth, artisanal struggle, the aura of the hand. Judd pushes that aside in favor of “the piece” - a finished, specific thing in space, with edges, proportions, materials, and an unblinking presence.

The phrasing matters. “After all” reads like impatience with a familiar misunderstanding, as if he’s answering a question he’s heard too many times: How long did it take? Did you make it yourself? The subtext: those questions are distractions dressed up as respect. Judd’s objects, often fabricated, make that argument physically. If a piece can be realized by a manufacturer without losing its force, authorship shifts from virtuosic touch to decisions: scale, repetition, interval, surface.

It’s also a quiet critique of the market’s hunger for narrative. Collectors and institutions love provenance stories because they’re easy to sell. Judd insists the only real story is what the piece does to you when you stand near it - how it claims the room, reorganizes your attention, and refuses to perform feeling on command.