The digitized photograph of One and Three Chairs represents a conceptual work by Joseph Kosuth. And because I think it matters to make such distinctions, I must state that I did not see it at the Museum of Modern Art when it was exhibited in 1965. I have only seen it since as a photograph. I am not writing about it because I believe it depicts a great work of art. Instead, any significance that it does have is as visual documentation of some philosophical ideas that precede it and then have filtered into landscape architecture.

I have seen Kosuth's writing, art critics' descriptions of his work, and a landscape architect's description of his work. It is worth looking at the latter, by Udo Weilacher, because by being included in a current book about our profession titled Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art, it has the potential to join the body of knowledge in our field. This quote is the entirety of what Weilacher wrote about this image:

Aristotle is saying here that there are "actual things" out there in the world, let's say, things like chairs or, even better, trees or animals. Then we have "mental experience" of these actual things. Aristotle does not say here what these mental experiences are. Presumably they are some combination of our eyes and our minds working together to give us clear access to the actual things. The key point is that Aristotle says of both the actual things and the mental experience of those things that they are the same for all. What this means is really very simple, and really very commonsensical. There is one world out there, and it is the world we all share. Despite enormous differences in cultural background, natural intelligence, and sensory power, human beings all pretty much see the same world. In short, we are capable of perceiving chairs.

Speech is different from actual things. Spoken language is obviously not the same for all. The word for chair in German is stuhl. The word chair in English is not the same. Language differs from culture to culture. But the world, according to Aristotle, remains the same. Mental experience is one step removed from the world. Spoken language is two steps removed. Even more removed is written language, which Aristotle describes as being symbols of spoken words.

Of Kosuth's work, One and Three Chairs, Aristotle would surely say there is one chair — the actual thing.

In Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida refers to this passage from Aristotle:

If, for Aristotle, for example, 'spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words,' it is because the voice, producer of the first symbols, has a relationship of essential and immediate proximity with the mind. . . . The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning . . . Thus, within this epoch, reading and writing, the production or interpretation of signs, the text in general as a fabric of signs, allow themselves to be confined within secondariness. They are preceded by a truth, or a meaning already constituted by and within the element of the logos.

Derrida understands how this passage from Aristotle sets up a world view. It places those things we share, actual things and mental experience, as coming first. Derrida, by contrast, objects to the idea that speaking and writing are preceded by the actual thing, the original, by a truth that we can all derive from mental experience. For Derrida, the photograph and the words are neither derived from nor dependent upon an actual chair. There is such a non-hierarchical equality between the chair, the photo and the text, for Derrida, that one might almost say there are three chairs . . . or one might say there are three texts.

Derrida's move has power because today we are swamped with representations. There are more pictures of chairs than chairs. Indeed, there are, some have said, already more home pages than people in the world. We know the built works of landscape architecture from their representations far more than from seeing the actual thing. Certainly much design work is inspired by representations rather than by actual things. Derrida points out the enormous importance and power of representation in the world in which we live. And yet, I can't quite accept the slippage that occurs if, in landscape architecture, we begin to think that our writing is not dependent upon built works or if we fail to draw clear lines between photographs and built works.

Robin Evans, in Architectural Projection, has defined the borders of this discussion: "The modish thing to do would be to argue that, in this expanding field of projections and images, the building itself has no special priority; that it is only habit that makes us insist with some indignation that it should maintain the priority it once had, that it has always had, or that we think it ought to have. Slightly less modish, but very self-righteous, is the stand taken against any drawings or pictures because they get in the way of our direct and authentic perception of architecture."

Derrida's attempt to elevate writing to the level of the actual thing has led to claims that it is the critic, the writer, who, as Arthur Danto has said, "identifies the thoughts that give life" to the built work. The critic spins tales, some of which are very engaging. However, some contemporary criticism is no longer aimed at built works and studying the latest theory has been replacing history. A parallel landscape architecture may be surfacing: theory.

To exemplify how the ideas behind Kosuth's One and Three Chairs operate in landscape architecture, I quote from the 1996 issue of Land Books. The first is from James Corner's review of Peter Walker: Minimalist Gardens. Although Corner does not hide the fact that he thinks Walker's work is "stunning," his primary aim in this review is away from Walker's work, in this case to something he calls de-objectification:

Well, yes, but it has already been extensively argued by cultural critics, philosophers, and others that much of the root cause of today's societal and environmental ills lies precisely within an excessive objectification of the world (with all the detached indifference and distance between things that then ensues). Thus critical practices of art and cultural production today are more concerned with deriving new forms of expression and meaning through tactics of de-objectification and the development of complex, dynamic ordering systems than through a mere pictorial reframing of things.

With this comment we're brought back to Aristotle. Could his common sense observations about an objective world really be the root cause of today's societal and environmental ills? What are critical practices? Is not good work always critical or does critical practice here suggest something else and, if so, what? What does Corner mean by tactics of de-objectification? Probably something like Kosuth and Derrida. Corner continues:

Also important for Walker is "objecthood" or the mute, self-referential presence of a thing (a stone, a tree, a gravel floor), and these moments are captured beautifully in many of the pictures. . . . The camera is able to further "objectify" and abstract a given thing, literally extracting it away from any contaminating context and showing it in its most stark, pure form, without people. Thus the picture book is the perfect (and necessary) complement to Walker's work — one might even suggest that the work is 'at its best' in the controlled and edited environment of the photographic portfolio. After all, Walker's landscape architecture is predicated upon the frame, the tabula rasa (or the absence of context), and absolute control over every detail.

Clearly, for Corner, objecthood is deficient. As is presence, for presence leans toward the existence of actual things. Here it also seems that Corner is suggesting that there is some kind of compliance or conformity between the objecthood of the built work and the photograph, as if the presence of actual objects is the same as their representation in photographs. Is this another kind of blurring of boundaries, where the actual thing is not that different from its photograph? Or is this about certain kinds of design that are derived from pictures, the kind Corner says is predicated on the frame? "One wants to ask, however, if there are other experiences and aspects of a particular project that are not susceptible to photography, and, if so, then how might these be represented in a book such as this?" This is a good question. Indeed there has been and is much more to be said about the power of pictures in our "mental experience" and on design. We cannot rid the world of pictures. Nor should we want to.

But then shouldn't we critics say whether we have seen the work only in pictures or have really seen the actual thing itself? Shouldn't Corner then tell us what of Walker's works he has seen and then help us to understand what the "contaminants" are in each of their larger contexts. After all, the majority of his readers will only see the work represented.

Because Corner's comments are part of a written work, actually a review of a monograph of built work, it is especially difficult to draw distinctions between the actual thing and its representation. Is Corner here talking about the chair, the picture, or all three? My purpose here is not to single out Corner but to point out that his is exactly the situation in which we so frequently find ourselves — removed from the built work and faced with so many representations. Admitting that this is the case, can our writing and practice become better at making distinctions between the many representations, draw some finer lines between the proposals for built works, photos of the work and the built work itself where felt experiences and, as Corner points out, contaminants live?

Assuming that it is not possible for a critic to see the work, then critical writing should make it clear what the subject is. If the criticism is based on the photographs, then, how is it exactly that the photographs pictorialize the work? What is it about the pictures that suggest the design is based on the frame? How is background used? Would more pictures help, perhaps a montage? Are the pictures framed scenically? Could they be otherwise? Who took the photos, professional photographers or the designers? From what period in the project's life do the photos date? How dependent is the presentation on aerial photos and plan views, those things that, for example, Richard Serra calls picturesque, and is trying to destroy in his work?

I next refer to Barbara Rose's review of Martha Schwartz: Transfiguration of the Commonplace because Rose makes it so clear that the subject of her writing is the built work, even though Rose also does not divulge whether she has actually seen any of it.

Schwartz takes that step few dare take: she puts her theories into practice. Her plans and drawings are not photo mock-ups or mediated reproductions; they are real commissions in the real world. Making something permanent — or at least not intentionally ephemeral — means asking for judgment and criticism. This is a bold move these days, when so-called "criticality" hides behind cagey conceptual slogans and theories. . . . The title, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, however, gives the false impression that Schwartz is using the old Duchamp-Cage-Warhol claim that context determines meaning. . . . Her transformations do not cause you to question whether you are looking at art or a bicycle wheel; they cause you to confront the quality and reality of our common visual environment.

Rose tells us that Schwartz is not doing what Kosuth did — putting a chair in a museum and asking us to ponder the question, Is it art? Rose's writing reveals a great deal about where she stands on the question of actual things: she believes there is a reality out there to which her writing does point, and that that reality is one we are all capable of perceiving and evaluating. It is our common visual environment which Schwartz asks us to confront.

Writing is quite different from, and is even secondary to, the actual things, the built works, of the world. This simple acknowledgment would allow writings in landscape architecture to narrow their focus. Landscape architectural writing cannot be aimed at all things. Most important, such writing must know at what it is aimed. Writing must either aim at actual built works, or at other writings, or at drawings, or at photographs, or even at themselves. Writing is vital as a means for discovering what you actually think. It's important to know, however, what it is you're actually thinking about.