Friday 9 March 2012

Joseph Kosuth

Kosuth is an American conceptual artist who lives and works in New York. His work consists of investigating the nature of art, focusing on what makes art, art. His most famous conceptual piece of art is 'One of three chairs'. Where he has a physical chair, next to an image of the chair, next to a dictionary description of the word 'chair'. He is looking into different 'forms' of art and the differences in physical , representational image & text. Showing how the physical object is the thing, and it is accompanied only by representation (similar to this is not a pipe). Even the title reflects the view, as there is only one physical chair, yet there are three chairs. This work pushes the boundaries of conceptual art and asks the questions of "what really is art?" "what is representation?" "how is a chair important?" In 1966 he started a project named Art as Idea as Idea. Where he he took clippings from dictionaries for the words: art, chair, meaning and definition. He then photographically enlarged them to a certain size to be exhibited. He states that the 'art' is the description its self.