Live Like an Artist – Thinking about The Gift

Several years ago in Rome, I took a photograph of a piece by Joseph Kosuth, titled, The Gift. In other places it’s titled Ex-Libris (Wittgenstein’s Gift). As someone who has been reading, thinking about, writing about, (in my book Calm Things for example) returning to The Gift by Lewis Hyde almost my entire life or so it feels these days (well since my undergrad days) my eye was immediately caught by the art work. I’m glad I thought to take a photo of it, however poor and off kilter it is. I was just wanting a record of the art work so that I could look up more about it and the quotation. As Margaret Atwood says in the intro to the latest re-issue of the Hyde book: “A gift is a gift when the giver exercises their choice; if something is taken against an owner’s will or without their knowledge, that’s called “theft.”” And then, the Wittgenstein quotation: “What you are regarding as a gift is a problem for you to solve.” As an art piece on glass, the reflections of those passing by add…