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Joseph Kosuth 's Argument That Conceptual Art

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This essay shall explore Joseph Kosuth’s argument that Conceptual Art requires art to shift from morphology to function; and therefore will investigate the meaning of this argument and how it has affected artistic practice. It will explain the importance of how this argument has changed the way the audience think about art. Subsequently it will outline several points of his argument and then expand and explore them in more depth. To define the artistic terminology used above, the term morphology is used to describe how a piece is constructed along with its overall aesthetics; whereas function is used to describe what is being said by the piece and the concept behind it. Conceptual Art emerged from abstraction and minimalism; it marked the end of modernism and questioned what constitutes art, having its own values separate from the rest of the world. A key source that will be referred to throughout this essay and which is regularly used for researching Kosuth’s argument is his 1969 text “Art after Philosophy”.
Kosuth argues Conceptual Art requires art to shift from Morphology to Function. In other words he states that the form of the work is secondary in importance to the context and reason for its creation; therefore promoting a separation between art history and aesthetics. Therefore all elements which are secondary to function should be removed and that the function of art is solely to address and question art. He continues on to argue that the artists’ idea or

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