Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf ◉

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– 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.

However, time has vindicated Krauss. In the 2020s, as NFT art and generative AI flood the market, her concept of the “technical support” is more urgent than ever. AI art, for example, does not have a medium in the Greenbergian sense; but Krauss would ask: What is the technical support of a diffusion model? (The latent space? The prompt interface? The training data’s bias?). rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf

When an artist paints a canvas pure white, are they destroying painting? Krauss argues they are revealing the medium.

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 find the full PDF, search academic databases

The enduring relevance of "Reinventing the Medium" explains why the remains a highly sought-after resource for academic research. The text bridges the gap between high modernism and the digital age. Conceptual Shift Traditional Modernism (Greenberg) Post-Media Reinvention (Krauss) Definition Tied to physical materials (oil, canvas, marble). Tied to a "technical support" or structural logic. Objective Purity and autonomy of the artwork. Critical resistance to mass culture and commercialism. Technology Rejects mechanical or commercial tools. Embraces, subverts, or utilizes obsolete technologies.

Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is a cornerstone of Krauss’s text. Broodthaers famously created fictional museums and installations utilizing outdated printing techniques, slide projections, and ready-made objects. Krauss argues that Broodthaers used these obsolete tools to mimic and critique the bureaucratic systems of museums and mass media, effectively inventing a new medium out of the debris of the old. Photography and the Mechanical Medium In the 2020s, as NFT art and generative

If you are building a reading packet, find these companion PDFs alongside Krauss’s essay:

: She highlights artists like James Coleman and Marcel Broodthaers as pioneers who used technical supports (like slide projections) to establish a new kind of artistic "specificity." 📖 Summary of the Argument

For Krauss, the medium is not a prison but a – one whose rules are made up as we go along, but without which there is no play at all.

| | Greenberg's Modernist View (Pre-1990s) | Krauss's Post-Medium View (1999 & beyond) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Definition of Medium | A unique, pure set of material properties (e.g., the flatness of canvas) | A "technical support" : a set of rules and conventions derived from material conditions | | Goal of the Artist | Exploit and purify the inherent properties of a chosen medium | Generate new conventions and reinvent an obsolete or new technical support | | Attitude to Other Media | Purist; avoid hybridity or "impurity" to maintain the medium's specificity | Embraces aggregation and heterogeneity ; the medium is a "complex structure of interlocking and interdependent technical supports" | | Artistic Practice | Focused on a single, traditional practice (e.g., painting, sculpture) | Appropriates obsolete technologies (like slide projectors) and new media to create unprecedented forms |