Atmosphere

Seminar Week: October 17–25, 2015

Donald Judd, Untitled mill-aluminium works, 1982–1986, Artillery Shed, Marfa, Texas

 

In West Texas there’s a great deal of land but nowhere to go. The land is closed to the people from the towns. There are no parks with facilities. On the other hand, as small as the towns are, most of the people are thoroughly urban and are not interested in the land. They even seem afraid of it and hostile to it, and if allowed, they attack it.
— Donald Judd

We will travel to the south west of the United States to visit places that have strong and very specific atmospheres made by art, architecture and by the land. We will begin the week in Dallas and visit the Kimbell Art Gallery, one of Louis Kahn’s finest works and one of the greatest settings for art made in the 20th century. From Dallas we will go to Marfa to see the many interventions and appropriations made in the town and in the surrounding landscape by the artist Donald Judd, work that brings an artist’s sense of control and precision to architecture, work that was motivated by Judd’s deep antipathy to the contemporary display of art. We will continue to travel northwards, visiting natural landscapes of enormous and sometimes intimidating power. We will see ancient pueblo settlements made in that landscape and also some modern and contemporary architecture that continues to draw on and come out of the exceptional qualities of this place.

The costs are approximately 2000 CHF including Transportation, Accomodation, 1 Dinner, Entrances, Guides and Reader.

Category F, 16 students

Professor Adam Caruso
Assistants: Reem Almannai, Martina Bischof, Murat Ekinci, Stefan Fürst, Claudio Schneider, Kai Zipse