{"data":{"id":"8377","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":8377,"topgoose_id":11208,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":8377,"title":"Five Words in Green Neon","display_artist_text":"Joseph Kosuth","display_date":"1965","accession_number":"93.42a-b","dimensions":"Overall: 62 1/8 × 80 5/8 × 6 in. (157.8 × 204.8 × 15.2 cm)","medium":"Neon tubing","department":"collection","classification":"Sculpture","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from Leonard A. Lauder","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJoseph Kosuth, \u003cem\u003eFive Words in Green Neon\u003c/em\u003e, 1965. Neon tubing, overall: 62 1/8 × 80 5/8 × 6 in. (157.8 × 204.8 × 15.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Leonard A. Lauder 93.42a-b. ©Joseph Kosuth/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1969, Joseph Kosuth published the first part of his three-part manifesto “Art After Philosophy” in a London journal and instantly became a leading theorist and practitioner of Conceptual art. “Being an artist now,” he wrote, “means to question the nature of art.” According to Kosuth, traditional art forms such as painting would only summon old-fashioned considerations of aesthetic value or taste. Art needed to define itself anew by abandoning conventional means of expression. \u003ci\u003eFive Words in Green Neon \u003c/i\u003eanticipates Kosuth’s written manifesto by a few years but clearly reflects its assertion that Conceptual art is based “on the understanding of the linguistic nature of all art propositions.” The work, comprising only the words of the title constructed in green neon tubing, makes language its content by collapsing description and image into each other. \u003ci\u003eFive Words in Green Neon\u003c/i\u003e is not only the title of the object, but all that we see. Art, Kosuth suggests, does not reside in the object itself, but in our ideas about the object.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A green neon sign mounted on a wall reads 'FIVE WORDS IN GREEN NEON' above an electrical box.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:40:08.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:36.287-05:00","images":[{"id":99653,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/8377/93_42a-b_vw2_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"721","type":"artist"}]}}}}