Krauss's post-medium condition is, in many ways, a direct response to the crisis that Greenberg's own logic created. By pushing the idea of medium specificity to its extreme—to the monochrome canvas and the readymade—Greenberg's followers had painted themselves into a corner. Krauss's essay is a way out: a "looking back," as she puts it, at the road that led to this impasse, in order to find a new path forward.
Through October , Krauss became a leading voice in introducing French post-structuralist theory (like the works of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes) to the American art world. Her work consistently challenges traditional art history, focusing instead on how the structural mechanisms of art produce meaning. Contextualizing "Reinventing the Medium"
In the landscape of late 20th-century art criticism, few essays have disrupted established paradigms as profoundly as Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium." Originally published in 1999, this seminal text addresses a critical crisis in contemporary art: the apparent death of traditional artistic mediums like painting and sculpture, and the rise of a homogenized, commercialized "post-medium condition."
In "Reinventing the Medium" (1999), Rosalind Krauss critiques the "post-medium condition," advocating for a return to "technical support" or specific artistic conventions over the generic, mixed-media approach of contemporary art. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, she argues for the "redemptive obsolescence" of mediums, highlighting artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge who redefine their work through specific, self-imposed rules. Read the full text at Semantic Scholar . Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
Krauss also looks back at Ed Ruscha’s artist books from the 1960s, such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations . Ruscha did not treat the camera as a traditional photographic medium. Instead, his medium was the conceptual framework of the American highway, car culture, and deadpan documentary formatting. The car and the road trip became the structural apparatus through which the art was generated. The Threat of "Intermediacy" and Visual Culture
This essay is not a eulogy for the old mediums, but a manifesto for their reinvention. For any serious student of art, it is essential reading.
: Photography occupies a central role in Krauss's argument. It is a hybrid form that never fit neatly into the modernist paradigm. By 1999, photography was also being declared "obsolete" with the rise of digital technologies. Krauss saw this moment of obsolescence not as an end, but as a paradoxically liberating starting point for artistic reinvention. Her essay is a "looking back" at the convergence of art and photography, but from a contemporary perspective that allows for a radical reassessment. Krauss's post-medium condition is, in many ways, a
When you download and read the "Reinventing the Medium" PDF, Krauss's argument unfolds across several dense, theoretical layers. Her primary objective is to find a way for art to maintain its critical integrity in a world where traditional mediums have collapsed. 1. The Threat of the "International Style" of Mixed Media
Her 1999 essay is often studied in tandem with her short book (2000). Here, she positions the work of Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers as a primary example of the self-differing, heterogeneous medium. Broodthaers's work—which spanned film, poetry, books, and the creation of fictional museums—could not be contained by a single material support, but it possessed a rigorous internal coherence.
I can’t provide a direct PDF of Rosalind Krauss’s essay “Reinventing the Medium” (or any other copyrighted material), but I can offer a of its key arguments, structure, and significance within her broader work. Through October , Krauss became a leading voice
Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is a cornerstone of Krauss’s text. Broodthaers famously created fictional museums and installations utilizing outdated printing techniques, slide projections, and ready-made objects. Krauss argues that Broodthaers used these obsolete tools to mimic and critique the bureaucratic systems of museums and mass media, effectively inventing a new medium out of the debris of the old. Photography and the Mechanical Medium
Searching for is an act of intellectual resistance. In a culture of scrolling and swiping, you are seeking a difficult, rewarding, 25-page argument that refuses to simplify art into lifestyle content.
| | Greenberg's Modernist View (Pre-1990s) | Krauss's Post-Medium View (1999 & beyond) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Definition of Medium | A unique, pure set of material properties (e.g., the flatness of canvas) | A "technical support" : a set of rules and conventions derived from material conditions | | Goal of the Artist | Exploit and purify the inherent properties of a chosen medium | Generate new conventions and reinvent an obsolete or new technical support | | Attitude to Other Media | Purist; avoid hybridity or "impurity" to maintain the medium's specificity | Embraces aggregation and heterogeneity ; the medium is a "complex structure of interlocking and interdependent technical supports" | | Artistic Practice | Focused on a single, traditional practice (e.g., painting, sculpture) | Appropriates obsolete technologies (like slide projectors) and new media to create unprecedented forms |