Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf Guide

To understand the "reinvention," one must first understand the demise. In the mid-20th century, the influential critic Clement Greenberg argued that the definition of Modernism was the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself. For Greenberg, "purity" was the goal: painting should strip away sculpture, literature, and theater to focus entirely on the flatness of the canvas and the optical experience.

However, by the 1960s and 70s, artists began to reject this purism. They embraced the "expanded field," blending performance, video, and text. The orthodox medium seemed to collapse. Many critics proclaimed that the medium was an obsolete concept—a relic of a bourgeois obsession with categorization.

Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium" is a call to move beyond nostalgia. It is a challenge to artists:

If you haven't read the full PDF yet, dive in. It is a difficult text, but it provides the vocabulary to understand why modern art looks the way it does—and how artists navigate a world where all the rules have already been broken.

Have you read Krauss’s essay? Do you agree that the concept of a "medium" is still relevant in the age of digital art? Let me know in the comments.

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

Rosalind Krauss’s 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" theorizes the transition from modernist medium-specificity to a "post-medium condition," where artistic practices are defined by "technical supports" rather than material limitations. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, Krauss argues that technologically obsolete mediums can be redeemed and reinvented as new aesthetic possibilities, referencing artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge. Read the full text at The University of Chicago Press: Journals.

Krauss, Reinventing The Medium (Critical Inquiry 1999) - Scribd

This document provides an overview and analysis of Rosalind Krauss's essay "Reinventing the Medium." The summary is as follows: 1) Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium

In her 1999 Critical Inquiry essay, "Reinventing the Medium," Rosalind Krauss outlines the "post-medium condition," arguing that artists can combat "art-in-general" by adopting obsolete technologies as new "technical supports". Drawing on Benjaminian concepts, she posits that artists must invent unique mediums through self-interrogation and specific, non-traditional media, using artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge as examples. The full text is available via The University of Chicago Press. 

Krauss, Reinventing The Medium (Critical Inquiry 1999) - Scribd To understand the "reinvention," one must first understand

This document provides an overview and analysis of Rosalind Krauss's essay "Reinventing the Medium." The summary is as follows: 1) Scribd

In sum, Reinventing the Medium captures a pivotal moment when photography shed its documentary skin and emerged as a versatile, self‑reflexive medium—an evolution that continues to shape contemporary visual culture.

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 detailed, in-depth summary and critical analysis of its key arguments, structure, and significance within her broader work.

| Greenberg (Old Medium) | Krauss (Reinvented Medium) | |------------------------|-----------------------------| | Medium = physical material (paint, canvas) | Medium = technical support (rules, apparatus, convention) | | Purity (eliminate everything extraneous to material) | Hybridity (combine supports in new, consistent ways) | | Medium is fixed, universal, a priori | Medium is invented, specific, a posteriori | | Progress through self-criticism | Progress through re-invention and recoding |

Krauss argues that Greenberg’s medium leads to a dead end: painting reduced to opticality and flatness. Reinvention, by contrast, allows artists to create new media for each new set of artistic problems. If you haven't read the full PDF yet, dive in

Rosalind Krauss's 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" addresses the "post-medium condition," proposing a shift from traditional material purity to a concept of "technical support" or "differential specificity" in art. The text analyzes how artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge redefine mediums through the use of obsolete technologies and discursive systems. Access the PDF version of the article via the University of Chicago Press. Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium

| Aspect | Greenberg’s Medium | Postmodern “Medium as Mix” | Krauss’s Reinvented Medium | |--------|--------------------|-----------------------------|-------------------------------| | Source | Physical properties (flatness, etc.) | No source; pure convention | Technical support + apparatus | | Goal | Purity, self-criticism | Play, irony, subversion | Recursive rule-following | | Temporality | Historical progress (teleology) | Eternal present (sampling) | Iterative, time-bound | | Example | Modernist painting | Video/installation mashup | Coleman’s slides, Kentridge’s drawings | | Failure mode | Kitsch, theater | Indifference, banality | Loss of recursion (becoming illustration) |

Serra’s early work involved “to roll, to crease, to fold.” Krauss uses Serra to show that a medium can be a list of actions applied to a material. In “Reinventing the Medium,” she reframes Serra’s lead-throwing as a recursive system: The act of throwing defines the sculpture, not the lead itself.

“Reinventing the Medium” has been enormously influential, but also contested:

Krauss herself addressed some of these in later essays, particularly on the “post-medium condition” and the work of artists like Stan Douglas and Pierre Huyghe.