“We have work by him from 1968 and work from 2016, the two book-ends,” gallerist Kelly told AFP, insisting that Kosuth was still “pushing the boundaries and the barriers of his work full-throttle.”

Asked how the art world has changed in the half century since he entered the scene, Kosuth complained that “corporate culture” was increasingly taking over.

He pointed out that traditional art history, examining the ideas behind the works, had in the past 15 to 20 years faced competition from a new art history: the history of the art market.

“So you talk about the prices of Jeff Koons or Damien (Hirst), which is not talking about the ideas engaged in the work. So this is a serious concern,” he said, as elegantly-clad deep-pocketed investors inspected his own work in the background.

He dismissed the artists “making trophies for billionaires,” insisting that his often monochrome work, inspired by philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Nietzsche “is not made to look swell over the couch.”

The problem, he said, with the growing sway the super wealthy hold over the art world is that “a busy billionaire doesn’t have time to study art,” and often determines which pieces are important by the price being paid for them rather than the ideas behind them.

“But the thing is that you can’t compare art to a handbag,” he said.

Trump a ‘pimple’

The obsession with money and short-term gains that have seeped into our social fabric have not only wreaked havoc on the art world, Kosuth said, despairing at the state of politics in his country.

“My work survived (former U.S. president) George Bush, and I thought it couldn’t get worse than that,” he said.

But that was before the presumptive Republican nominee in the upcoming U.S. elections, Donald Trump.

“He’s like the pimple that appears from a bad diet,” he said, adding hopefully though that as a pimple, Trump “can be squeezed and we can move on.”