Samuel Beckett and/in Contemporary Art: Joseph Kosuth’s series of installations-exhibitions 'Samuel Beckett, in play' (2010-2011-2012)

Between November 2010 and August 2012, veteran Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth had a series of five solo exhibitions on three continents, which comprised both new and retrospective work. The new work took the form of installations that appropriated Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre, emphasising within it (as the titles of the installations suggest) 'Texts for Nothing' and 'Waiting for Godot'. The following discussion of Kosuth’s appropriation of Beckett is part of a larger research project that aims at the systematic and comprehensive mapping of Beckett’s pervasive presence in contemporary art practices and discourses in the last half century, around the world. Many issues that I’ll deal with here – in an attempt to illuminate Kosuth’s Beckett and the ways in which it itself illuminates fundamental features of Beckett’s own creative endeavours – will also allow me to exemplarily illustrate the main challenges of the ‘Samuel Beckett and/in Contemporary Art since the 1960s’ project