Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf Jun 2026

At the end of the 20th century, this is the moment when photography is perceived as an outdated medium, out of fashion, and as such, it allows artists to invent it anew each time.

Krauss identifies a specific historical moment she calls the "post-medium condition"

: When anything can be art (from a pile of trash to a social interaction), Krauss argues that art loses its critical edge and risks falling into

While Krauss wrote this essay at the dawn of the digital age, its relevance has only grown. As digital software, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence flatten physical materials into pixels and code, the question of what constitutes a medium is more urgent than ever. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

Krauss draws on two key theoretical sources:

Kentridge’s charcoal drawings, filmed, erased, redrawn, and re-filmed, produce a distinctive “stop-motion” animation. Krauss shows this is not traditional cel animation nor simple film. Its rules:

Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is another pillar of Krauss’s critique. Broodthaers famously declared the "bankruptcy" of traditional mediums. He created fictional museums, using eagles, signage, and packing crates as his formal tools. For Broodthaers, the "medium" became the institutional framework of the museum itself. By manipulating the language of exhibition, cataloging, and display, he invented a medium out of institutional critique. 3. Ed Ruscha and the Automobile At the end of the 20th century, this

In an era where digital art seems to further homogenize media, Krauss’s argument for "recursive" invention provides a pathway for artists to create specific, meaningful work rather than empty content.

| 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) |

In her seminal text, Krauss argues that a medium is not merely a physical material like oil paint, bronze, or film stock. Instead, a medium is a —a set of rules, conventions, and technical limitations that an artist must navigate to generate meaning. Krauss draws on two key theoretical sources: Kentridge’s

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

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