Conceptual Tautologies

The text is an attempt to consider the character of tautological activities undertaken in conceptual art. There are two ways the issue can be approached. The first refers to the texts of Joseph Kosuth, who wrote that an artwork is a tautology because it refers to the term ‘art’. The author develops the sense of Kosuth’s statement “a work of art is a definition of art” and states, that a part of the tautological system that makes a proposed definiens of ‘art” is available for direct perception, but the other part, which is the term ‘art’ must be recalled intellectually by the recipient. After taking into account the conceptual reference, the sense of a conceptual project with a meta-artistic character becomes noticeable. Polish examples of such works are projects by Roman Opalka, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Jan Chwalczyk and Wanda Golkowska. The second part of the article considers conceptual projects, in which both parts of equal tautology are directly given. Conceptual works of this structure may either state what is “unquestionable and universally important” (as Alicja Kepińska wrote) or make a kind of sense “at the same time suggested and reversed” (Umberto Eco). The possibilities are considered in reference to tautological works of Zdzislaw Jurkiewicz, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Zbigniew Dlubak and Jerzy Trelinski