KOSUTH Joseph

Joseph Kosuth is an American artist, leader of Conceptual Art, born on January 31, 1945 in Toledo (Ohio, USA). Joseph Kosuth studied at the Toledo Museum School of Arts, the Cleveland Art Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Kosuth is known for his study of language and its meaning in art. Through his works and text-based installations, Kosuth examines semiotic expressions.
He creates installations and presents texts on billboards and in the
advertising pages of magazines. In particular, he uses dictionary definitions. His work is a linguistic analysis of the relationship between words, things and images.

Among his most famous works, the series One and three 1965 appears as a first investigation. This work consists of an object, its photographic reproduction on a scale of 1 and its dictionary definition. It consists in the fact that the buyer can make the photograph himself of the chair of the art center in which the work would be exhibited.
The goal of his work is to “produce meaning”, even if it means banishing the aesthetic aspect of the work. He bases himself on a tautology: “Art is the definition of art”. Joseph Kosuth affirms that the art is language and that the art concerns the domain of the ideas. Art has nothing to do with aesthetics or taste. He speaks of “artistic proposals” rather than “works”.