Kosuth

Joseph Kosuth (born 1945) is an American conceptual artist and writer whose practice has been central to the development of conceptual art. Working with language, indexing, and photography, Kosuth investigates the relationship between objects, their meanings, and the words used to describe them. He is best known for a series of works that foreground the primacy of idea and concept over material form.

In 1965 he produced One and Three Chairs, a landmark work that presents three versions of a chair—a physical chair, a photograph of the chair, and a printed dictionary definition of chair—inviting viewers to question what constitutes the object of art. This and related works, often organized as installations, use text, definitions, and images to explore representation, reference, and perception. Kosuth frequently employs ordinary language and definitions from dictionaries to challenge conventional aesthetics and to foreground the role of the viewer in making meaning.

Kosuth has been associated with the development of installation-based and language-centered practices within Conceptual Art and has influenced generations of artists who place language and idea at the center of artworks. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is held in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate, and the Centre Pompidou.

Kosuth has also written extensively on art, language, and theory, contributing to journals and manifestoes that articulate the theoretical basis of Conceptual Art. His ongoing practice continues to probe how meaning is constructed in art and how language mediates perception.