Editing One and Three Chairs (section)

==Early conceptual art==
"Event cards" of [[Fluxus]]-artists like [[George Brecht]], [[Dick Higgins]] and [[Yoko Ono]] prefigured Kosuth's concern with the difference between a concept and its mode of presentation. These artists also tackled the problem of presenting "concepts" to an art audience. ''One and Three Chairs'' is, perhaps, a step towards a resolution of this problem. Rather than present the viewer with the bare written instructions for the work, or make a live event of the realization of the concept (in the manner of the Fluxus artists), Kosuth instead unifies concept and realization. ''One and Three Chairs'' demonstrates how an artwork can embody an idea that remains constant despite changes to its elements.

Kosuth stresses the difference between concept and presentation in his writings (e.g., "Art after Philosophy", 1969<ref name="Kosuth1">Kosuth J., (1969), [http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html ''Art after Philosophy, part 1'']</ref>
) and interviews (see the quotation below). He tries to intimately bind the conceptual nature of his work with the nature of art itself, thus raising his instructions for the presentation of an artwork to the level of a discourse on art. In 1963 [[Henry Flynt]] articulated these problems in the article "Concept Art".<ref>Flynt, Henry: [http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/conart.html ''Concept Art'']. In: Mac Low, Jackson/Young: LaMonte (ed.): An Anthology. New York 1963, unpaginated.</ref> This was a forerunner to Kosuth's thematization of "Concept Art" in "Art after Philosophy", the text that made ''One and Three Chairs'' famous.<ref>Kosuth, Joseph: Art after Philosophy, Part III. In: Studio International, November 1969, p. 212.</ref>