Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf Jun 2026

The centerpiece of Krauss’s argument in "Reinventing the Medium" is the work of Irish artist James Coleman. Krauss uses Coleman’s work to demonstrate exactly how an artist can reinvent a medium using a commercial, non-art technology.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Krauss's groundbreaking text, exploring how she navigates the death of traditional mediums and uncovers a new, redemptive form of artistic practice. The Historical Context: The Crisis of the Medium

To understand why "Reinventing the Medium" is so important, one must first understand the moment in which it was written. By the late 20th century, the traditional understanding of an art "medium" was in a state of collapse. The concept of medium specificity, famously championed by the formalist critic Clement Greenberg, argued that each artistic medium had a unique, inherent essence. For painting, that essence was "flatness"; for sculpture, it was three-dimensionality. The goal of art, in this view, was to purify the medium by eliminating anything extraneous. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

Finding the PDF of Rosalind Krauss's "Reinventing the Medium" is the first step to understanding one of the most significant theoretical shifts in modern art history. While the document can be elusive on the open web, it is readily available through standard academic channels. More importantly, the ideas contained within those 16 pages—the post-medium condition, technical support, and the ghost of Clement Greenberg—remain essential for anyone trying to understand how art operates in the age of digital reproduction. Krauss does not destroy the medium; she saves it from irrelevance by showing that it was never about the paint on the canvas, but about the logic of the tool.

A true artistic medium must have —not technological specificity, but formal and operational specificity derived from an artist’s sustained exploration of a support. The centerpiece of Krauss’s argument in "Reinventing the

– Early essays revisit the Bauhaus and Surrealist experiments, showing how those pioneers already treated the camera as a thinking instrument. This sets a lineage that validates later “post‑photographic” practices.

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. The Historical Context: The Crisis of the Medium

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 .

If you are downloading the for research or coursework, consider how her theories apply to contemporary digital practices:

Krauss grounds her argument in the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, particularly his concept of For Cavell, the material basis of a medium, such as the mechanical process of a camera, constitutes a form of automatism. He argues that "in mastering a tradition, one masters a series of automatisms upon which the tradition maintains itself". Krauss adopts this concept to explain how new media function: they are not defined by their physical stuff but by the automatic, repeatable processes they enable. The goal of the post-medium artist is not to invent a new physical material, but to establish a "new automatism" that can generate a body of work.

– The concluding essays speculate on digital imaging, internet distribution, and the collapse of the “original” in a world of infinite copies, suggesting that the medium will continue to evolve beyond its mechanical origins.