Study of Meaning and Concept in Joseph Kosuth's Works

Joseph Kosuth, American conceptual artist, has special techniques in art creation. He is an theorist, writer and artist and professor in art universities. He is one of the important figures in contemporary art, especially conceptual one. He wrote some seminal essays regarding contemporary art, like “Art as Idea as Idea” and “Art after philosophy”. Through this texts he found the new bases for a new art. Kosuth’s works show the major distant from traditional art frameworks. The rejection of aesthetics concepts and painterly elements are two goals of conceptual arts. Ideas, meaning and signification in this stream are so important. Ideas of artist can be socio-political and philosophical or religious and cultural; meaning is comprehension of audience; and signification is related to work. In the first stages of his career, Kosuth follows the theory of Ludwig Wittgenstein who is a main character in analytical philosophy. We will claim that not only this kind of Kosuth’s works but also his whole works can be read using Derrida’s approach. This comparative analysis shows the impact of linguistic anddeconstructive thought on Kosuth’s works and considers precisely his theory, his art and his shift in art interests and definition. In his career, this artist has created different and interesting types of works. At first stage, he put three mediums, i.e. an object, a picture of object and its dictionary definition,together. In another stage, he deforms classical artistic pictorial and writing works, for example crosses out Freud’s theories and writings. In the third, he shows just writing sentences of himself or a philosopher or from dictionaries in different styles, especially with neon. In this paper, with regarding to Wittgenstein’s impact, Derrida’s deconstructive concepts have been read, thus someconcepts like, decenterism, intertextuality and appropriation, the importance of writing and grammatology, double reading, undererasure, subjectile and labyrinth have been read. Dematerialization in all the Kosuth’s works means decentering the main elements of formalist painting. Also, this artist employs form ofwriting and language for his creativity. In this kind of works, he calls art as analytic proposition which is a picture of the world. The possibility of proposition rests upon the fact that logic of world structure is similar to the language structure. We find through Derrida’s argument that there is a rupture between signified and signifier. This can be explained through Derrida’s interest in writing as asuperior form in speech/writing opposition. The artist also has used philosophers’ words and quotations. He shortly follows other philosopher’s ideas. He follows the undererasure strategy which stem from Heidegger’s philosophy and Derrida’s usage of it. Derrida thought this strategy as a metaphor,because both affirms and rejects an issue. Kosuth also uses and rejects Freud’s theory. As a result, there is no fixed and singular meaning for audience; there are no fixed significations for signs. There is no way for artist toshow and express all aspects of his/her ideas in artwork. In this paper, despite Kosuth’s intentions, we have found other meanings in his works probably in contrary to his ideas.