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He was trying to find out who he was,” Annalee Newman said. This was the “meta” beyond the physical materiality of Newman’s art

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. …

Donald Judd created spirit as well as form, thought together with feeling, and ethics alongside uncertainty. Polarities like these help keep existence open, and are, I imagine, one of the reasons why he objected to the label “Minimal.” “I don’t think anyone’s work is...