Krauss highlights several artists who have successfully navigated this post-medium landscape by creating their own recursive structures:
: She discusses how photography and film transitioned from artistic tools to mere "appliances," losing their unique aesthetic power.
By the 1970s, this rigid definition collapsed under the weight of Minimalist sculpture, institutional critique, and conceptual art. Krauss herself famously chronicled this collapse in her 1979 essay "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," where she mapped how sculpture had become a "negative condition"—no longer a monument, but rather "not-architecture" and "not-landscape."
For Krauss, Ruscha’s medium is – a pure technical support for serial enumeration.
: Greenberg collapsed a medium's identity into its material properties. Krauss, drawing on post-structuralist thought (particularly Derrida's deconstruction), argues that a medium is actually "a complex structure of interlocking and interdependent technical supports and layered conventions distinct from physical properties". For her, the specificity of a medium lies in its "constitutive heterogeneity—the fact that it always differs from itself".
From these, she argues that a is:
A medium is born only when an artist takes a technical apparatus and uncovers its specific internal logic, limitations, and rules. The artist transforms a tool of mass communication into a site of self-reflexive critique.
Rosalind Krauss's 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" addresses the "post-medium condition," proposing a shift from traditional material purity to a concept of "technical support" or "differential specificity" in art. The text analyzes how artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge redefine mediums through the use of obsolete technologies and discursive systems. Access the PDF version of the article via the University of Chicago Press . Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium
: Uses the stop-frame animation and erasure as a technical support for drawing.
Artists must invent rules for new technologies rather than just using them as tools.
Through the medium of the book and the automobile-influenced gaze, Ruscha highlights the "recursive" nature of the modern American landscape. Significance of the "Reinventing the Medium" Thesis
It retains a relationship to past forms of expression, acting as a counterweight to the disposable nature of commercial culture. Case Studies: Benjamin and Broodthaers
To understand why Krauss’s essay remains a cornerstone of art theory, one must look at the aesthetic landscape of the late 20th century. For decades, twentieth-century art criticism was dominated by Clement Greenberg’s brand of high modernism. Greenberg argued that each art form should pursue absolute purity by focusing exclusively on its material nature: was strictly about flatness and pigment.
Krauss anchors her theoretical arguments by referencing specific artists who embody her new model.
Case Studies in Reinvention: James Coleman and Robert Whitman
"Reinventing the Medium" is more than just an article—it is a critical framework for understanding how art survives in a digital and postmodern world. Rosalind Krauss argues that by engaging in a recursive, self-examining process, artists can transform the obsolete, the mundane, and the technical into new, meaningful media. For students searching for the "Reinventing the Medium PDF" or engaging with her later works, this text provides the necessary tools to navigate the complex, post-medium landscape of contemporary art.
: Photography occupies a central role in Krauss's argument. It is a hybrid form that never fit neatly into the modernist paradigm. By 1999, photography was also being declared "obsolete" with the rise of digital technologies. Krauss saw this moment of obsolescence not as an end, but as a paradoxically liberating starting point for artistic reinvention. Her essay is a "looking back" at the convergence of art and photography, but from a contemporary perspective that allows for a radical reassessment.
Krauss highlights several artists who have successfully navigated this post-medium landscape by creating their own recursive structures:
: She discusses how photography and film transitioned from artistic tools to mere "appliances," losing their unique aesthetic power.
By the 1970s, this rigid definition collapsed under the weight of Minimalist sculpture, institutional critique, and conceptual art. Krauss herself famously chronicled this collapse in her 1979 essay "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," where she mapped how sculpture had become a "negative condition"—no longer a monument, but rather "not-architecture" and "not-landscape."
For Krauss, Ruscha’s medium is – a pure technical support for serial enumeration.
: Greenberg collapsed a medium's identity into its material properties. Krauss, drawing on post-structuralist thought (particularly Derrida's deconstruction), argues that a medium is actually "a complex structure of interlocking and interdependent technical supports and layered conventions distinct from physical properties". For her, the specificity of a medium lies in its "constitutive heterogeneity—the fact that it always differs from itself". rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
From these, she argues that a is:
A medium is born only when an artist takes a technical apparatus and uncovers its specific internal logic, limitations, and rules. The artist transforms a tool of mass communication into a site of self-reflexive critique.
Rosalind Krauss's 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" addresses the "post-medium condition," proposing a shift from traditional material purity to a concept of "technical support" or "differential specificity" in art. The text analyzes how artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge redefine mediums through the use of obsolete technologies and discursive systems. Access the PDF version of the article via the University of Chicago Press . Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium
: Uses the stop-frame animation and erasure as a technical support for drawing. : Greenberg collapsed a medium's identity into its
Artists must invent rules for new technologies rather than just using them as tools.
Through the medium of the book and the automobile-influenced gaze, Ruscha highlights the "recursive" nature of the modern American landscape. Significance of the "Reinventing the Medium" Thesis
It retains a relationship to past forms of expression, acting as a counterweight to the disposable nature of commercial culture. Case Studies: Benjamin and Broodthaers
To understand why Krauss’s essay remains a cornerstone of art theory, one must look at the aesthetic landscape of the late 20th century. For decades, twentieth-century art criticism was dominated by Clement Greenberg’s brand of high modernism. Greenberg argued that each art form should pursue absolute purity by focusing exclusively on its material nature: was strictly about flatness and pigment. From these, she argues that a is: A
Krauss anchors her theoretical arguments by referencing specific artists who embody her new model.
Case Studies in Reinvention: James Coleman and Robert Whitman
"Reinventing the Medium" is more than just an article—it is a critical framework for understanding how art survives in a digital and postmodern world. Rosalind Krauss argues that by engaging in a recursive, self-examining process, artists can transform the obsolete, the mundane, and the technical into new, meaningful media. For students searching for the "Reinventing the Medium PDF" or engaging with her later works, this text provides the necessary tools to navigate the complex, post-medium landscape of contemporary art.
: Photography occupies a central role in Krauss's argument. It is a hybrid form that never fit neatly into the modernist paradigm. By 1999, photography was also being declared "obsolete" with the rise of digital technologies. Krauss saw this moment of obsolescence not as an end, but as a paradoxically liberating starting point for artistic reinvention. Her essay is a "looking back" at the convergence of art and photography, but from a contemporary perspective that allows for a radical reassessment.