In the spring of 1979, a torrential downpour pelted the normally parched West Texas town of Marfa. Eleven-year-old Flavin Judd and his eight-year-old sister, Rainer, scrambled to help their father, Minimalist pioneer Donald Judd, rescue pieces of his early artwork from the deluge. The rain was quickly flooding the Block, an enclosed compound anchored by two former army warehouses that Judd had converted into an artistic preserve — a blended home, library, and private gallery where every object was installed according to his strict aesthetic.
"We stuffed towels under the doors and cleared out drains," Flavin, now 40 and back in Marfa for its annual Open House (an all-encompassing art, music, and foodie festival), recalls. As the water rose, Donald jumped into his pickup and rammed a two-foot thick brick wall again and again to make an outlet.
"To see him risk his life for what he believed in, for his work, made a strong mark upon me," Flavin, who could pass for Conan O'Brien's younger brother in cowboy boots, remembers. That day, Judd's two children promised each other they would do everything to preserve their father's legacy, a promise they've kept even when it meant sacrificing their own careers. (Both are screenwriters and directors.) Working tirelessly over the past 12 years, Flavin and Rainer have transformed this tiny desert town into an international destination for pilgrims of Minimalist art.
With the almost infinite emptiness of West Texas as his center of gravity, Donald Judd accumulated one of the most significant contemporary art collections in the world — including works by his friends Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, and Dan Flavin (after whom Flavin is named). Judd had an equally voracious appetite for real estate, acquiring more than 30,000 acres and a number of other properties scattered from Marfa to New York, all intended to house great art in great style.
In 1994, Donald Judd died of lymphoma at the age of 65, and Flavin and Rainer were left the responsibility for a uniquely complicated estate. "When Don died there was $200 in the bank and $7 million in debts," says Flavin. The estate — which became the Judd Foundation in 1996 — was floundering. "People close to us were concerned we wouldn't have lives of our own," says Rainer, now a willowy 37-year-old who is president of the Judd Foundation. "But building Don's vision of a modern cathedral with important, permanent art has shaped us into who we are."
Permanence requires an endowment. So in 2006, Christie's auctioned 36 works from the Judd collection, raising $24 million, helping to preserve the Block and 14 other permanently installed buildings in Marfa, and realizing their father's wildly ambitious dream of creating a contemporary art universe unlike any museum in the world.
When Flavin's not tending the foundation's fires in Marfa, he's readying his family — his wife, Michèle, a French photographer, and their three young children — for a move from Venice, California, to Paris. A restless polymath who is frighteningly well-read ("I'm like a drug addict to ideas," he says), Flavin is also an accomplished writer. In 1991, he wrote and directed the indie film Tales of Cerro Chino, about two salesmen who try to take advantage of a rancher and wind up buried six feet under. It was shot on the Judd ranch south of Marfa. "Not a true story," Flavin swears. "You couldn't bury anybody out there — it's solid rock." He describes his latest screenplay, set in El Paso, as "a family drama that involves cloning, cowboys, and coffee," but refuses to elaborate.
At the moment, Flavin is working on three projects: a graphic novel he describes as "The Matrix for 10-year-olds" about two kids who discover an alternate universe, and two illustrated children's books. He's emphatic that his finely rendered illustrations "are not art." "I think art should really fuck with your conception of who you are and where you are in the order of things," Flavin says, echoing his dad. "I don't think that much has happened in art or architecture in the last 25 years."
It's been a battle for Flavin to find his own voice and style while at the same time managing his father's legacy. "Don was interested in making things right," he says. "I've probably inherited that clean Juddian aesthetic, but I'm also fascinated by the way things fall apart, the unpredictable. Everything I do now is antideterministic."
