A new book celebrates the minimalist modern artist who shaped the future of furniture .

It’s fair to say that Mr Donald Judd wasn’t the cuddliest of modern artists: “I am not interested in the public,” he once harrumphed, and at first glance, his signature sculptures – painted and/or partitioned boxes and frames in Cor-ten steel – appear equally austere. Spend time with them, however, and their stark, geometric beauty starts to take hold. Mr Judd also designed furniture – there’s a legendary online quiz that challenges you to differentiate the priceless Judds from cheap high-street shelving, etc (MR PORTER scored a very creditable eight out of 12) – and his stacked wall-unit sculptures and polished caskets resemble the fixtures and fittings for the world’s most rigorous minimalist apartment. Something like Mr Judd’s own meticulously preserved living quarters on New York’s Spring Street, where he ripped out the heating tubes because they interfered with the lines of the building. Or the abandoned military barracks in Marfa, Texas, which Mr Judd purchased in the mid-1970s (to join his substantial property portfolio in the area) and filled with his own works and those of his fellow New York minimalists, including the fluorescent light sculptures of Mr Dan Flavin).

A domestically scaled sample of Mr Judd’s work can be seen in Donald Judd: Cor-ten, a new book that focuses on the pieces crafted in the high-strength, weathering, alloy steel he preferred, because, he said, it was “nice and smooth” and eliminated any trace of his own hand – “I wanted to get rid of every distracting detail.” It’s a handy primer in advance of a full-scale retrospective of Mr Judd, due to be staged at New York’s Museum of Modern Art next year. “Over the last 20 years, we’ve really come to take him for granted,” says its curator Ms Ann Temkin, “because, whether or not we’re conscious of it, his aesthetic shaped the look of so much that followed.”

Mr Judd may not have been interested in the public (a photo in the book shows the artist in his full, gruff, plaid-shirted, get-off-my-property pomp), but, two decades after his death, it seems that the public is still very interested in him.

Donald Judd: Cor-ten is out now