It can be grating to hear people proudly declaring they’ve never heard of an artist, as if ignorance proves that person’s irrelevance. It is especially annoying when – as with Alma Allen, who was announced in November as a surprise pick to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale – it is someone you’ve been following for years.
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When Donald Judd began buying up property in Marfa, a remote West Texas town in a terrain of grassy high desert strewn with cattle ranches and sudden squat hills, he was looking for a new context for his art. More specifically: He was looking to free himself from the predominant context for art in that time (the 1970s) and place. “The art world in New York is terrible and has been terrible for a long time,” he later said. “I am very much against the museums and the critics and the business in New York.”1 In Marfa Judd aimed to install his work in perfect conditions and leave it there in perpetuity.
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Jonathan Griffin 