Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf !free! Page

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The Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers is another touchstone. Broodthaers used the idea of the museum, the eagle, or fiction itself as a medium. He demonstrated that a medium could be an ideological or institutional framework, rather than just a physical object. Why Scholars Search for the PDF: Academic Impact

Krauss anchors her theoretical framework in the work of specific contemporary artists who exemplify this reinvention. Two of the most prominent figures discussed in relation to this era of her thought are James Coleman and Marcel Broodthaers.

The slide projector inherently relies on a gap—the dark moment of silence and blackness between one slide dropping and the next appearing. Coleman emphasizes this rupture, contrasting the stillness of the photograph with the continuous flow of the audio narrative.

"Reinventing the Medium" was not an isolated work but part of a broader intellectual project that has shaped art criticism for decades. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

In "Reinventing the Medium," Krauss argues that artists do not work in a vacuum; they work in relation to a set of conventions, techniques, and materials. 1. The Recursive Equation: Medium-Support-Convention

Why does one essay from 1999 still generate so much interest? Because the questions Krauss asked have become even more urgent in the 21st century. We live in an era of deepfakes, AI-generated imagery, and social media platforms that blur the lines between image, text, and video. The concept of the "medium" as a stable, physical category seems almost quaint. Yet Krauss's argument—that the medium must be reinvented , not abandoned—provides a powerful tool for analysis.

Medium specificity is no longer about material purity but about the internal rules and "recursive structures" an artist builds within their chosen support. Essential Case Studies

Krauss notes that early photography and film were once celebrated for their indexical relationship to reality—the fact that light physically bounced off an object and left a chemical trace on a negative. Do you need a detailed breakdown of

Example: Charon’s Fee (1984) – a single slide of a Greek temple’s interior, accompanied by a narrative about a tourist’s near-death experience. The medium’s “rule” is that meaning emerges from the between seeing and hearing.

: Uses the automobile and the layout of the "book" as his underlying medium. 3. Why This Text Matters Today The essay is a defense of specificity

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

Krauss, Rosalind E. "Reinventing the Medium." Critical Inquiry , vol. 25, no. 2, 1999, pp. 289–305. (Part of a special section titled "Angelus Novus: Perspectives on Walter Benjamin"). He demonstrated that a medium could be an

Following Clement Greenberg, Modernism (e.g., Abstract Expressionism) insisted on the purity of the medium—painting should only be painting (flatness), sculpture only sculpture.

Art risks becoming generic, commercialized, and devoid of formal rigor.

: It rescued the concept of medium from both Greenbergian rigidity and postmodern flaccidity. It provided a rigorous language for discussing post-studio practices without falling into medium-specific essentialism. It influenced later writers like David Joselit (on “after art”) and Carrie Lambert-Beatty (on “parafiction”).