Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf High Quality May 2026
Rosalind Krauss’s 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" argues that while traditional artistic mediums have dissolved, artists like James Coleman reinvent the concept through a "technical support" that creates new, self-imposed rules [1, 2]. The text, which analyzes the post-medium condition through a critical reading of Walter Benjamin, can be accessed through academic databases such as JSTOR or within Krauss's book, A Voyage on the North Sea
If you’d like, I can:
- Greenbergian Modernism – which insisted on the purity of each medium’s “essential” properties (flatness for painting, anti-gravity for sculpture), leading to a teleological dead end.
- Postmodern anti-formalism – which celebrated the mixing and dismantling of media as liberation, but risked vacuous relativism where “anything goes.”
- Can we apply Krauss’s idea of a “technical support” to a contemporary digital platform like TikTok or AI-generated art? What would be the recursive rules?
- Is Krauss’s position too restrictive for artists who intentionally work across radically different materials?
- How does her concept of the medium differ from Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message”?
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. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
Tip for finding the essay legally: If you are a student, check your university library’s online database (JSTOR, Project MUSE, or MIT Press Direct). Many public libraries also offer free access to academic journals through interlibrary loan or digital archives. Greenbergian Modernism – which insisted on the purity
Krauss, Reinventing The Medium (Critical Inquiry 1999) - Scribd Can we apply Krauss’s idea of a “technical
- The gap between the frozen image and the temporal unfolding of speech.
- The infrathin difference between successive images (e.g., the same scene from slightly different angles or times).
- A recursive structure that makes the viewer aware of the act of projection itself – the light, the shutter, the interval.