Joseph Kosuth (Toledo, 1945) is one of the best known exponents of conceptual art, a movement that focused on the idea and meaning of the work rather than its aesthetic form. His works, often characterised by verbal and visual language, raise questions about the relationship between language, perception and reality.
In 1999 he participated in the IV edition of Art to Art with the work The Chair In front at the Dooran intervention that was placed in the Loggia del Podestà in San Gimignano. In 2004, The Chair in Front of the Door was made permanent and moved to Piazza del Bagolaro in San Gimignano, where it continues to stimulate reflection on the role of art in the urban context and in everyday life.
Joseph Kosuth (Toledo, 31 January 1945) is an American artist. A leading exponent of conceptual art, Joseph Kosuth studied fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His works generally aim to explore the nature of art, focusing on ideas at the margins of art, rather than producing works for their own sake.
His art is very self-referential. One of his most famous works is One and Three Chairs, a visual expression of Plato's concept of 'form'. The work One and Three Chairs shows a chair, a photograph of that chair, and a dictionary text with the definition of the word 'chair'. The photograph is a representation of the real chair situated on the floor, in the foreground.
The definition, which is on the same wall as the photograph, describes the concept of what a chair is, in the various meanings of the term. In this and similar works Five Words in Blue Neon and Glass One and Three, Kosuth makes tautological statements, in that the works are literally what they are claimed to be.Very important are also his works with neon, which he began to use because he was interested in materials for signage and to refer to the world of advertising. Famous was the series entitled Ex libris (1990), neon compositions with short quotations from well-known writers, set up in metropolitan public spaces.In addition to his work as an artist, he has written many books on the nature of art and artists, including The Artist as Anthropologist. In his essay Art after Philosophy (Art after Philosophy, 1969) he argued that art is a continuation of philosophy, which he saw as coming to an end. Like the Situationists, he rejected formalisms as exercises in aesthetics.There is an interview with Joseph Kosuth entitled "Four Answers to Four Questions" in No. 9 of Agalma magazine, March 2005: 71-85, edited by Roberto Terrosi.
taken from wikipedia