Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf //free\\ -

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

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

Introduction

Rosalind Krauss is a prominent art critic and theorist known for her influential writings on modern and contemporary art. In her essay "Reinventing the Medium," Krauss explores the changing nature of artistic media and the ways in which artists continually redefine and expand the possibilities of art.

The Essay's Main Argument

Published in 1999, "Reinventing the Medium" is a thought-provoking essay that challenges traditional notions of artistic media and the creative process. Krauss argues that the medium of art is not a fixed or stable entity, but rather a dynamic and constantly evolving concept that is subject to reinvention by artists. She contends that the medium is not simply a technical or material support, but a complex system of conventions, norms, and expectations that shape the way artists work and the way we understand art.

Key Points

1. The Myth of the Medium: Krauss argues that the concept of a medium (e.g., painting, sculpture, photography) is often understood as a natural or essential category, rather than a historical and cultural construct. She claims that this myth of the medium has been perpetuated by art historians and critics, who have tended to view media as fixed and unchanging.
2. The Expanded Field of Art: Krauss draws on the work of artists such as Robert Smithson, Marcel Duchamp, and Sherrie Levine to illustrate how the medium of art has been continually expanded and redefined over time. She shows how artists have pushed against traditional boundaries and conventions, creating new forms and possibilities for art.
3. The Importance of the Artist's Gesture: Krauss emphasizes the role of the artist's gesture or intervention in shaping the medium of art. She argues that the artist's actions, decisions, and manipulations of materials and processes are what bring the medium to life and give it meaning.
4. The Challenge to Traditional Art History: Krauss's essay challenges traditional art historical narratives, which often rely on a linear progression of styles and movements. Instead, she advocates for a more nuanced understanding of art history, one that acknowledges the complex and often contradictory nature of artistic media.

Impact and Influence

"Reinventing the Medium" has had a significant impact on contemporary art discourse, influencing artists, critics, and curators to think more critically about the nature of artistic media. The essay has also contributed to a broader rethinking of art history, encouraging scholars to consider the complex and multifaceted ways in which art has evolved over time. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

Conclusion

Rosalind Krauss's essay "Reinventing the Medium" offers a provocative and insightful exploration of the changing nature of artistic media. By challenging traditional notions of the medium and highlighting the dynamic and creative ways in which artists work, Krauss encourages us to think more critically about the possibilities of art and the role of the artist in shaping those possibilities.

References: Krauss, R. (1999). Reinventing the Medium. In R. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious (pp. 277-295). MIT Press.

The Key Concept: Automatism and the "Support"

Krauss borrows a term from psychology and surrealism: Automatism. In art, she uses it to describe the "default settings" of a medium.

Think of painting. The default support is the canvas. The default tool is the brush. An artist who doesn't question these things is operating on "automatic pilot." They are just making another painting because that’s what painters do.

For Krauss, the crisis of modern art occurred when artists could no longer blindly rely on these conventions. The old supports (the canvas, the pedestal) became hollow. If art was to survive, it couldn't just abandon the idea of a medium—it had to reinvent it.

The "Ghost" of the Medium

Krauss makes a fascinating distinction between a medium and a genre.

• Genre: A set of rigid rules (e.g., a still life must have fruit; a tragedy must end in death).
• Medium: A technical support that allows for the generation of the new.

She argues that in the postmodern era, the "medium" often survives as a ghost. Artists like James Coleman or Jeff Wall (photographers who treat photos like cinema, or cinema like painting) are reinventing the medium by acknowledging that the old boundaries don't exist, yet still grounding their work in a specific technical apparatus.

They aren't just making "hybrids." They are using the conventions of one medium to critique or expose the conventions of another. They are conscious of the "ghosts" of painting, film, and theater, and they summon those ghosts to create something new. In her 1999 Critical Inquiry essay, "Reinventing the

Beyond the Flatbed: Deconstructing Rosalind Krauss’s “Reinventing the Medium” and Finding the PDF

In the pantheon of late 20th-century art criticism, few names loom as large—or provoke as much rigorous debate—as Rosalind Krauss. A co-founder of the seminal journal October, Krauss has spent decades dismantling the formalist orthodoxies of Clement Greenberg while simultaneously carving a distinct path through post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of medium specificity. For students, scholars, and artists grappling with the transition from modernism to postmodernism, one essay stands as a crucial, albeit notoriously dense, milestone: “Reinventing the Medium” (1999).

Searching for the "Rosalind Krauss Reinventing the Medium PDF" is often the first step for a graduate student preparing for a comprehensive exam or a researcher tracing the evolution of digital art theory. However, finding a legal, accessible PDF is only half the battle. The other half is understanding what Krauss means by “reinventing” a concept that many critics had declared dead. This article serves as a guide to the essay’s arguments, its historical necessity, and the ethical considerations of accessing the text.

The Key Concept: The Postal Principle

The most famous (and most complex) argument in the essay involves Krauss’s adoption of the “postal principle,” a concept borrowed from the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

Lacan argued that a letter always reaches its destination. He used the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” to suggest that meaning is not fixed but is generated by the structure of signifiers. Krauss adapts this to art. She claims that a medium works like a postal system: it establishes a circuit, a channel of communication that includes the possibility of noise, delay, return, and interception.

For example, consider the medium of video art. It is not simply "electronics" or "magnetic tape." According to Krauss, the medium of video is defined by feedback. The closed-circuit loop—the ability to project the self onto a screen in real time—creates a specific psychological and aesthetic condition. Artists like Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci didn't just use video; they reinvented the medium by exploring the recursive loop between performer and monitor.

The essay posits that every genuine artistic medium is a form of recursive rule-structure. The artist does not invent a new medium from scratch. Rather, they find a dormant technical support (like a postcard, a phonograph, or a video monitor) and "reinvent" it by uncovering its internal, forgotten logic.

Summary: The Takeaway

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

1. Don't just accept the defaults. If you use a camera, understand its history.
2. Acknowledge the ghosts. Art is always in conversation with what came before.
3. Use the support. The physical or technical substrate of your art (the screen, the code, the wall) is not just a container—it is the subject.

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. The Myth of the Medium : Krauss argues

Rosalind Krauss and Reinventing the Medium (PDF)

Rosalind Krauss, a leading art historian and critic, edited the seminal 1997 volume Reinventing the Medium: The Photographic Image in Contemporary Art. The book, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, gathers essays that explore how contemporary artists re‑contextualize photography, treating it less as a documentary tool and more as a conceptual medium.

Core Thesis: Medium as “Recursive Rule-Set”

Krauss draws on two key theoretical sources:

• Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the “infrathin” – the smallest possible difference between two seemingly identical things (e.g., the warmth of a seat just vacated). For Krauss, this becomes a model for how media operate at the threshold of perception.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games” – specifically, the idea that meaning arises from rule-governed activities, not from reference to an external reality.

From these, she argues that a reinvented medium is:

“a set of conventions that are derived from a technical support, but that are not reducible to that support, and that can be repeated across different works, generating a tradition.”

Crucially, this medium is recursive: it generates its own internal logic and criteria for success/failure, independent of broader artistic trends or market demands.

The Ghost in the Machine: Understanding Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium"

If you study modern art, you eventually hit a wall—literally and metaphorically. You look at a piece by Marcel Duchamp or a light installation by James Turrell, and you ask: "Is this painting? Is this sculpture? Or is it just... stuff in a room?"

In the late 1990s, art historian Rosalind Krauss tackled this identity crisis head-on in her seminal essay, "Reinventing the Medium." If you’ve ever downloaded the PDF hoping for a quick definition, you likely found a dense, theoretical thick forest.

Today, we’re hacking through the underbrush to explain why Krauss’s argument matters, why she thinks modern art is haunted by the past, and what it means to truly "reinvent" a medium.