Four Colors Four Words - Joseph Kosuth

While wandering the Hirshhorn, there were a variety of pieces that demonstrated significant technical ability, artistic understanding, or creative imagination. It is these works that I tend to gravitate to: those that appear to have been the product of weeks if not months of diligent labor or a spark of creative genius. It is ironic, or at least I think, that then the piece that leaves the most indelible imprint in my mind is the one that appears most simplistic.

Ever since my first trip to the MOMA in New York, I have had an aversion to pieces that seem to give a slap in the face to all those deserving artists that spend decades striving for attention but never attain it. I have seen many odd things displayed at the MOMA: the front page of the New York Times haphazardly ripped out and crudely nailed to the wall, without even a frame; a white canvas, without any additional alteration, hanging on the wall still in its plastic packaging; an amorphous ceramic sculpture that it appeared took less than ten minutes to conceive and create. It is pieces like this where I imagine the artist laughing his way to the bank. But for some reason, it is Four Colors Four Words by Joseph Kosuth that keeps me thinking.

My reason for choosing this piece to discuss is this: it is Kosuth's work that led me to the realization of why this modern pieces are considered art. While creative and technical depth are subjective questions, I feel that one thing most people can agree on is that these modern pieces raise questions and force us to debate what defines art. It is a question that artists have long struggled with. Only until relatively recently has photography been embraced as an art form. Today, there continues a fierce debate over whether street art and graffiti is a form of destruction or an expression of urban culture.

There may be a deeper question that Kosuth is trying to convey in his piece. But if that's true, I unfortunately do not see it. What I do see is a minimalist work of art that has somehow provoked in me even larger questions of what defines art and how artistic tastes shape how pieces are judged. And it is because this piece is able to raise these questions that Kosuth is successful as an artist.