"The magician" by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005) http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,,1669112,00.html
Context: Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.
“If one wanted to make a work of art devoid of meaning, it would be impossible because we’ve already given meaning to the work by indicating that it’s a work of art.”
Joseph Kosuth, “Introduction” in Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1960–1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); cited in: Thierry Mortier. " Semiotics as Art: Kosuth http://www.semionaut.net/semiotics-as-art-joseph-kosuth/," Sunday, 1 July 2012.
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Joseph Kosuth 11
American conceptual artist 1945Related quotes
“A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.”
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: "Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"
If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.
"Wyndham Lewis Against Abstract Art" (1957), p. 164
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)
undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)
“Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.”
As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”