8 / Writing
| Artist / Origin |
Joseph Kosuth (American, b. 1945)
Region: North America
|
|---|---|
| Date |
1965
Period: 1900 CE - 2010 CE
|
| Material | Wood chair, black and white photograph, and text |
| Location | Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France |
| Credit | © 2009 Joseph Kosuth/ARS, NY. Courtesy of CNAC/MNAM/ Dist. Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY/Photo by Philippe Migea |
expert perspective
| Sylvia WolfDirector of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle |
expert perspective
Sylvia Wolf
Director of the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle
“backIn the 1960s artists were challenging the hierarchy of information and what was in, what made visual art art, and including words, for example, or everyday objects. And I’m thinking about Kosuth, for example, and his piece One and Three Chairs [ETY], from 1965. Equal weight is given to the physical object of a chair, to the photographic reproduction of a chair, and to the dictionary definition of a chair—all of which are on view as part of the piece—two pieces on the wall and the chair sitting in front of it. Which is the correct chair? Which is the chair that we value, which is the one that is the most important, or are they all equally symbolic and significant of chair, meaningful, communicative? The ambiguity that the work suggests is a provocation and therein lies the art as far as I’m concerned.”