Give me a few years

Later on, after years in college spent studying something else, I returned to art. Here's my version of the model in the studio. I was about 25 when I made this drawing.
Unlike Judd's mine is not a cliched version of School of Paris, but a drawing that already manifests visual ideas that I would explore afterwards. My model sits upright, holds a book, seems like a person who actually exists and who has a reason for being portrayed: she's beautiful, not as a type, but as a human being.

My high school drawing

When I was younger than Judd, I made this drawing of my mother from a photo taken of her in the early 50s. It's a drypoint made by scribing a piece of plexiglass (which readers may recall later would become Judd's "signature" material).
I was 17 when the drawing was made, at least three years younger than Judd at the time of him limp figure. Already I showed some understanding of line as having a kind of tempo like one finds in music.

An early painting by the master

Seeing an early art work by the canonized artists of contemporary art, one sees why they needed to be doing something other than representational art if they were to become celebrated. Donald Judd's 20 something work doesn't show any particular understanding of how or even of why one arranges forms. One senses him saying "I can draw," simply on the basis of our being able to identify the subject. But there is no reason why he draws this figure and nothing in particular that he does with the forms of the figure. It's hard to identify with the work in any but a cliched way.
If it seems a little cruel of me to make harsh critique of the work of someone so young, well compare his with the drawing in the next post. Read somebody else's review of it here at the site where I located the picture.