concept:era contemporary
One and Three Chairs
Folding chair, photograph of chair, and dictionary definition of 'chair' by Joseph Kosuth, 1965. Chair 82 × 37.8 × 53 cm; photo 91.5 × 61.1 cm; text panel 61 × 76.2 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The canonical work of Conceptual Art: three representations of a single concept simultaneously present.
Scholarly Significance
Conceptual Art — One and Three Chairs is the canonical tautological object of Conceptual Art.
Notes
- ·Three modes of the concept 'chair' simultaneously present: the physical object, a photograph of that specific object in its installed position, and the dictionary definition of 'chair'.
- ·The work raises the question: which of the three is the 'real' chair? — and thereby questions the relationship between concept, object, image, and language.
- ·Informed by Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and A.J. Ayer's logical positivism.
- ·Published alongside Art After Philosophy (1969), Kosuth's foundational text: 'All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually.'
- ·MoMA version uses an Eames-style folding chair; Kosuth authorises each installation with a locally acquired chair, so multiple versions exist globally.