Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium — Pdf

How does Krauss’s view of change the way we look at "retro" technology (like vinyl or film)?

: Uses the slide projector and advertising formats as a reinvented medium. William Kentridge

If you are searching for a PDF of this seminal essay, you are likely trying to navigate Krauss’s complex critique of how technology impacts artistic expression. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Krauss's arguments, the historical context of her theory, and why her concept of the "post-medium condition" remains vital today. Who is Rosalind Krauss?

Krauss recognized that the traditional concept of the medium (oil on canvas, carved marble) was obsolete. However, she rejected the idea that the "medium" itself was dead. Instead, she argued that the medium must be from the ruins of postmodernism. Reinventing the Medium: The Core Arguments

By removing the image (the picture of a landscape or a person), the artist forces the viewer to look at the —the physical fabric, the texture of the paint, the wall behind it. They take the "automatic" part of painting (the canvas) and turn it into the subject itself. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

For Krauss, a medium is not a material (e.g., “video”) but a set of conventions derived from a technical apparatus. She famously analyzes James Coleman’s slide projections and William Kentridge’s animated drawings . These artists don’t just use film or drawing—they build a new medium by establishing recursive rules (e.g., Kentridge’s erasure-and-redrawing process).

The historical state where traditional artistic mediums (painting, sculpture) have lost their purity and distinct boundaries.

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Krauss argues that Coleman does not simply use this technology as a neutral vehicle for content. Instead, he treats it as a "technical support." By exposing the internal mechanics, constraints, and structural gaps of the slide-tape apparatus, Coleman elevates it to the status of a medium. He accomplishes this by developing what Krauss calls "automatisms"—a term borrowed from Stanley Cavell, referring to a set of rules or formal possibilities inherent to a specific technology that an artist can explore to generate meaning. Photography and the Archive How does Krauss’s view of change the way

Krauss’s text offers a way out of this aesthetic aimlessness. By her logic, digital art or AI art cannot achieve significance simply by mimicking older forms (like generating an "oil painting" via a prompt). Instead, digital artists must find the specific limitations, errors, and structural boundaries of the digital apparatus itself—such as data corruption, algorithmic bias, pixelation, or code architecture—and transform those elements into the rules of a reinvented medium. Key Takeaways from Krauss's Theoretical Framework

: However, starting in the 1960s, artists began to deliberately challenge and dismantle this idea. Conceptual art and other contemporary practices "jettisoned the specific medium in order to juxtapose image and written text in the same work". This experimentation led Krauss to define a "post-medium condition"—the abandonment of the modernist emphasis on the medium as the primary source of artistic significance. For Krauss, this "spells the end of serious art" if not critically confronted.

By the late 1990s, the art world was thoroughly dominated by installation, conceptual art, and multimedia projects. The strict boundaries that once separated a painting from a sculpture had dissolved. Krauss, a towering figure in structuralist and post-structuralist art theory and co-founder of October magazine, stepped into this chaotic landscape to ask a fundamental question: If the traditional medium is dead, what grounds the aesthetic value and critical power of art?

Krauss identifies a specific historical moment she calls the "post-medium condition" This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Krauss's

To Krauss, a medium is not just a raw material (like paint or clay). It is a complex, historical bundle of rules, conventions, and physical limitations that an artist must negotiate. To escape the trap of commercial mass media, contemporary artists must choose a specific, often obsolete or technical apparatus, isolate its inner rules, and use those rules to create a new recursive structure for art-making. Key Case Studies: James Coleman and Walter Benjamin

It marks a significant shift in Krauss’s own career, acting as a "break" or revision of the strict postmodernism she was previously associated with.

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