Judd’s style of artwork is what I would believe minimalism is. The artworks consist of a very few colors and very straightforward shapes and lines. His pieces are mostly presented with a very simple or clean background like most other artworks you would see in a museum, and in other cases the furniture pieces are photographed in a showroom. Judd also uses three main methods and materials to create his pieces: plywood sculpting, concrete and metal molding, and painting on a canvas.

My first impressions from scrolling quickly through the gallery was that it felt like I was visiting a modern artwork museum where minimalism is the main theme. And on the other hand, it’s as if I were visiting some cheap knock off IKEA furniture store (especially from the judd foundation website). Most of the art pieces I could kind of resonate with as I can appreciate the minimalism style; however, I quite dislike the minimalist look of his furniture designs. For furniture, I value practicality as much as a beautiful design. And in Judd’s case, all I can see is the design and very little to none practicality. I understand there’s quite a fine line between furniture for artwork and furniture for consumers, even Donald Judd himself said so in this quote: 

“The configuration and the scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional. If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous. The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness and scale as a chair ... A work of art exists as itself; a chair exists as a chair itself.” 

What I find interesting with a little bit of research is that Donald Judd seemed to started off as a more traditional artist with painting as his primary way of expressing art to an artist who became fond in expressing minimalism through furniture.

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Khoury’s style of artwork incorporates a lot of her Lebanese culture and the piece “Tapestry ll” also reflects upon that. She states that it is one of the items that her grandparents brought with them when they immigrated, and she grew up around it. Tapestry being a form of textile art that has a lot of diversity in color, and that is clearly reflected on the piece. The artwork has a very nice color theme to it, consisting of three main light colors and some other gradients. However, unlike traditional tapestry art, the shapes and patterns are very abstract, and the only definite shape you can immediately observe is that faint circle. She utilizes the technique of wiping and sanding to subtract previous paints to achieve the bark like pattern. 

I don’t really understand abstract art, so my first impressions of the piece was being really confused. But after watching an interview of Chantal Khoury with Robert Enrigh, I slowly saw more and more revealed to me. Tapestries often are displayed for a long time, and can go through many human changes or weathering, and the piece of art reflects that, showing many layers and iterations. And the reason the art piece looks so abstract is probably because of the many design changes it went through, always changing and redesigning, sometimes in one session, and sometimes from a new refreshing perspective, resulting in an art piece with many different “sections.”

Furthermore, Khoury starts to reveal some cultural design aspects in the art piece. She calls them inherited motifs, and consists of many religious aspects she grew up with, such as catholicism and greek orthdox. However, I struggle to see that aspect of the art, probably because I am not familiar with those religions or I simply don’t have the eye for that detail.

Overall, I find the piece “Tapestry ll'' a very interesting piece. The main connection to her Lebanese culture seems to be from a physical object - a tapestry, but the iterations that the design went through really shows the events of the Lebanese culture through time.  

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