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Much of the cogency of Judd’s best-known essay, ‘Specific Objects’, comes from its being both a statement of aesthetic principle and a broad critical assessment of the new forms of sculpture or three-dimensional art making an impact in the New York art world in the mid-1960s. Because he was trying to explain why he felt impelled to depart from accepted modernist understandings of the art object, the essay has a striking sense of urgency. But it does not deal directly with his own sculpture. …

Disparity is a method against determinism. It opens existence to free will, which is why credible art never settles. This type of aesthetic experience concentrates the sensual complexity of reality. By reality, I mean both physics and fantasy. “It is a case of a ‘transition,’” Gilles Deleuze explained, “of a ‘change,’ a becoming, but it is a becoming that endures, a change that is substance itself.” We are, disparity makes clear, but the emergence of spirit and matter. …