LA SEPTIEME INVESTIGATION (PROPOSITION 8). 1970.

Paris. Galerie Daniel Templon. 1970
27 x 21 cm 15 sheets of photocopies typescript printed recto only. Stapled. This publication was part of Kosuth”s series First Investigations (subtitled Art as Idea as Idea), which he began in 1966. The series was comprised of photocopies of dictionary definitions and other texts; in it he sought to demonstrate that “art” is not located in the art object, but in the idea or concept of the work.

By 1970, Kosuth’s series had progressed to the Seventh Investigation which was comprised of a series of “propositions.” This proposition #8 was created for a show at Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris from November-December 1970 where this limited edition booklet was dispersed across several desks in the gallery space. The text entirely in French is composed of excerpts from unattributed texts about WWII (the French Resistance, the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, the siege of Stalingrad, etc.) and a final page which is an alpha-numeric schematic seemingly related to the book’s interior structure. Slight browning to margins of cover and a hand-written note of the artist and gallery top right (which has been on every copy we have seen) and staples are slightly rusted else VG+. Rare,