Judd through Oldenburg

Abstract

In his critical writing on Claes Oldenburg during the 1960s Donald Judd explained how emotional content might be conveyed through representational imagery, without the emotion depending on either the identity of the represented object or the subjective mood of the artist. Such art was neither representational, nor abstract, nor expressive in the usual understanding of these general terms. To establish the specificity of his position – through Oldenburg – Judd resorted to catachresis and syllepsis, rhetorical devices that operate where more familiar language fails.