In a firm rejection of the formalist qualities of Abstract Expressionism, the artist Joseph Kosuth (born 1945) stated: “Being an artist now . . . means to question the nature of art” (Kosuth, 1969) Whereas Paik’s Zen for Film uses a filmic readymade, Kosuth’s Nothing uses words as the medium, therefore creating a linguistic readymade. The work consists of a dictionary definition of the word “nothing” that has been photographically enlarged with a Photostat machine, an early twentieth-century photocopying technique. Nothing is part of his series Titled (Art as Idea as Idea), which includes dictionary definitions of “art,” “water,” and “paintless.” Each piece is accompanied by certificates of documentation, which permit the remaking of the work for exhibition. With this authentication, Kosuth did away with the idea of the unique art object. He shifted the focus from the physical content of the work to its concept. Replacing representational objects with words, Kosuth emphasized his conceptual message, which describes both nothingness and the impossibility of depiction. —LH

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly, New York, © Joseph Kosuth. Photograph by Jason Wyche, New York