Matter and Meaning in the Work of Art: Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs

Abstract

Abstract My interest in Joseph Kosuth’s assemblage, One and Three Chairs of 1965 (see Illustration 5), is in the way in which it requires us to consider how meaning is embodied within the work of art. In his discussion of Conceptual Art the art historian Hans Belting said that this work, “proposed a thesis that could have been voiced at any time, even a century earlier. But the proposition could not have been exhibited as art until the mid-1960s.” This statement is interesting but problematic. The idea that any work of art ‘proposes a thesis’ or ‘presents a proposition’ is problematic. For it seems to imply that we can expect some determinate meaning from a work of art.