Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Joseph Kosuth

I am only describing language, not explaining anything.

I liked that the work itself was something other than simply what you saw It meant you could have an art work which was that idea of an art work, and its formal components weren't important.

Photography, as an invention, was both art and science. The view it gave us of the world was in some measure acceptable because it was a product of our vision of the world; and it did so as part of the same process which seemed to impart 'truth': science.

Seeing is not as simple as looking.

Forget your ideas about art. Make a shopping list of everything you like about what you've done. Include qualities that you've seen in your life, in the world, and possibly in art that you like. Take this list and make a work that satisfies all of the things on your list without caring if it looks like art.

That celebrated marriage of science and art, photography, seemed at the time to join together how we look at the world, art, with how we were coming to know it, science.

Change art to include yourself.

Anything can be art. Art is the relations between relations, not the relations between objects.

All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually.

When objects are presented within the context of art (and until recently objects always have been used) they are as eligible for aesthetic consideration as are any objects in the world, and an aesthetic consideration of an object existing in the realm of art means that the object's existence or functioning in an art context is irrelevant to the aesthetic judgment.

Making something new to look at is a futile and empty act if its only audience is the eyes.

Unlike the marks of a painting, the photo seems to organize its 'opinions' in relation to the world; even when the photographs have clearly been manipulated, the 'opinions' seem to have all the more force, with the suggested 'participation of the world' articulating that 'opinion' as a difference.