Joseph Kosuth

Joseph Kosuth, born in 1945, American conceptual artist, whose works address theoretical problems of language and meaning. Kosuth typically combines text with objects, as in his work One and Three Chairs (1965, private collection), which consists of a life-size photograph of a chair, an actual chair, and the dictionary definition of chair printed on a wall beside the first two. The work appears to question whether a visual or verbal representation of an object can express the essence of that object.

In the 1980s Kosuth employed the words of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in a series of works. He printed Freud’s words on the walls of an exhibition space and then placed red neon lights over the words, effectively crossing them out. By making the words both visible and visibly cancelled at the same time, Kosuth suggests that language both is and is not what it says. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Kosuth also used neon in a series of works entitled Ex Libris. Intended for specific cities—including Prague, Czech Republic; Esslingen am Neckar, Germany; and Columbus, Ohio—the works consisted of quotations written in neon tubing, from authors that Kosuth carefully selected for their relevance to locations within each city. In Esslingen am Neckar, for example, Kosuth installed passages from Austrian novelist Robert Musil’s writings along walls of pedestrian underpasses. One quotation translates to read: “Isn’t that like a bridge, of which only the beginning and the end exists, and which one nonetheless so confidently walks over as though all of it were there?”

Kosuth, considered a founder of the conceptual art movement during the 1960s, was strongly influenced by the philosophy of language of Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In two essays entitled “Art After Philosophy” (Studio International, October and November 1969), Kosuth asserted that in the future art would take over where philosophy had left off. Kosuth’s premise was that philosophy is hampered by having to use language to talk about language, whereas art offers many more tools with which to express meaning. His essays also cited the ready-made sculptures of French artist Marcel Duchamp as marking the turning point to modern art, changing art’s focus from appearance to concept.

Kosuth was born in Toledo, Ohio. He was a student at the Cleveland (Ohio) Institute of Art from 1963 to 1964 and at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1965 to 1967, where he later taught for many years. He also studied philosophy and anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York City in 1970 and 1971. Kosuth was a founding director of the Museum of Normal Art in New York City (1967) and editor of Art and Language Press (New York and England, 1969-1973) and of Fox Magazine (1975-1976). In addition to exhibiting his own work in galleries and museums worldwide, Kosuth has curated numerous exhibitions of the work of other artists.