Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf |verified| Jun 2026

The table below outlines the key contrasts:

Reinventing the Medium: Rosalind Krauss and the Post-Medium Condition

Krauss borrows the term “post-medium condition” from philosopher Stanley Cavell. However, she clarifies that this condition does mean the end of media. Rather, it signals the breakdown of traditional, a priori media (e.g., painting, sculpture) and opens the possibility for artists to invent new, specific media on a case-by-case basis.

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

Krauss frequently cites the Irish artist James Coleman, who utilized the outmoded technology of the slide-tape piece (synchronized audio and projected photographic slides). By using a medium that was already obsolete and distinct from both cinema and traditional photography, Coleman constructed a new aesthetic language. The gap between the still image and the moving narrative became a new "medium" to explore memory, identity, and spectatorship. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

By the 1990s, Krauss observed that this modernist paradigm had collapsed. The rise of conceptual art and postmodernism had jettisoned the idea of a pure, specific medium, leading artists to freely mix images, text, and found objects. is Krauss's forceful response to this fragmentation. She doesn't mourn the loss of the old mediums but rather argues for a new understanding of what a medium can be—not a fixed, physical support (like canvas or marble), but a “ technical support ,” a set of conventions and possibilities that artists can actively generate and reinvent.

Platforms like JSTOR, Project MUSE, or university library catalogs regularly host the essay, which was published in Critical Inquiry (Autumn 1999, Vol. 26, No. 1).

To fully grasp the implications of Krauss's argument, the following works are essential companions:

She argues that modernist artists became aware of the conventions of their specific mediums (the flatness of painting, the indexical nature of photography) as a set of rules. The "reinvention" occurs when an artist acknowledges these conventions not as limitations to be obeyed, but as conventions to be played with. The medium is no longer a given fact of nature; it is a social construct that the artist can choose to inhabit, empty out, or reshape. The table below outlines the key contrasts: Reinventing

Coleman's work, particularly his slide-tape pieces, is the perfect illustration of "reinventing the medium." By the 1990s, slide projectors were obsolete, a forgotten remnant of mid-20th-century business and education. Yet, Coleman harnessed this obsolete "" in a non-traditional way. He used projected slides with a voiceover soundtrack, creating works that were neither film, theater, nor traditional photography. This hybrid, born from an outmoded technology, allowed him to explore the slippage between image and sound, memory and present perception. For Krauss, Coleman's work isn't simply mixed-media; it is the creation of a new medium by adopting the technical support of the slide projector and generating a new set of artistic conventions around it.

Krauss does not advocate for a conservative return to traditional oil painting or marble sculpture. Instead, she argues that avant-garde artists must the very concept of a medium from within contemporary technological realities.

Case Studies in Reinvention: James Coleman and Robert Whitman

—a state where traditional distinctions between artistic media like painting and sculpture have collapsed. Instead of viewing this collapse as a total loss, argues that artists can "reinvent" the medium by adopting a "technical support" This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Krauss's

critiques the "deadening generality" of postmodernism, where "art-at-large" or generic installation art has replaced specific craft. Technical Support vs. Material Medium: She moves away from Clement Greenberg

: Photography, once a tool for documentation, became a "theoretical object"—a way to deconstruct art's traditional focus on manual skill and the "original". 2. What Does "Reinventing" Mean?

Beyond the Canvas: Understanding Rosalind Krauss and the "Reinvention of the Medium"