Rosalind Krauss Reinventing The Medium Pdf May 2026
Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium" is a call to move beyond nostalgia. It is a challenge to artists:
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.
Rosalind Krauss's 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" argues that artists can counter the "deadening generality" of postmodernism by engaging in "redemptive obsolescence," utilizing technologically outdated mediums as new "technical supports". By embracing "differential specificity," artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge redefine artistic mediums through recursive, rule-based structures rather than traditional material purity. Read the full article at Critical Inquiry. Reinventing the Medium | Critical Inquiry: Vol 25, No 2
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
Reinventing the Medium: Rosalind Krauss and the Post-Medium Condition
In her 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium," originally published in Critical Inquiry, renowned art theorist Rosalind Krauss addresses a crisis in contemporary art: the "post-medium condition". For decades, the art world followed the formalist doctrine of Clement Greenberg, who argued that each art form must stay within its "pure" material boundaries—painting should be about flatness, and sculpture about three-dimensionality.
Krauss argues that this old definition of medium-specificity has collapsed, but she doesn't believe we should abandon the idea of a "medium" altogether. Instead, she suggests that artists can—and must—reinvent it. The Role of Obsolescence
Drawing heavily on the theories of Walter Benjamin, Krauss suggests that a medium’s true aesthetic potential is often only realized when it becomes obsolete. When a technology (like analog photography or slide projectors) is no longer a primary tool for mass-market commodity production, it is "freed" from its utilitarian purpose. This freedom allows artists to look back and use these outmoded tools as a "technical support" for new creative rules and conventions. Examples of "Reinventions"
Krauss highlights several artists who have successfully navigated this post-medium landscape by creating their own recursive structures: rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
James Coleman: Used the slide-tape projector (an outmoded advertising tool) to create complex, layered narratives that exist between the still and the moving image.
William Kentridge: Utilized "stone-age filmmaking"—laborious charcoal drawing, erasing, and re-photographing—to create a medium defined by the palimpsest effect and the physical act of erasure.
Sophie Calle: Adopted the journalist’s report as a medium, using its neutral, distanced structure to explore deeply personal and emotional subjects. Why It Matters Today
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) [PDF] Reinventing the Medium | Semantic Scholar
Rosalind Krauss’s 1999 essay, "Reinventing the Medium," is a foundational text for understanding contemporary art. In this piece, Krauss explores how the traditional definition of a "medium" (like painting or sculpture) has collapsed and how artists can find new ways to create specific, meaningful work in a "post-medium" age. 🎨 Key Concepts
The Post-Medium Condition: Krauss argues that traditional artistic mediums have been "outmoded" by technology and mass media.
The Problem of "Apparatus": She discusses how photography and film transitioned from artistic tools to mere "appliances," losing their unique aesthetic power.
Reinvention: Instead of abandoning the idea of a medium, Krauss suggests artists must "reinvent" it by creating their own internal sets of rules and structures.
Case Studies: 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
Krauss critiques the way globalization and the "culture industry" have flattened art into a generic experience. She believes that for art to remain critical and deep, it needs a "technical support"—a physical or conceptual framework that dictates how the work functions. By looking back at "obsolete" technologies, artists can find the friction necessary to resist the slickness of modern digital media. 🔗 How to Find the PDF Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium" is a call
Since this is a seminal academic text, it is widely available through various educational platforms. You can typically find it via:
JSTOR: Often titled under "Reinventing the Medium" or found within the journal Critical Inquiry.
University Repositories: Many art history departments host the PDF for syllabus use.
Google Scholar: Searching "Rosalind Krauss Reinventing the Medium 1999 PDF" will usually yield direct links to academic uploads.
Books: It is also a lead essay in her book, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. 💡 Discussion Starters
If you are reading this for a class or a project, consider these questions:
Does "reinventing the medium" still apply to digital art and NFTs, or has the medium disappeared entirely?
How does Krauss’s view of obsolescence change the way we look at "retro" technology (like vinyl or film)?
Can an artist truly create their own "rules" without the backing of a traditional discipline? To help you get the most out of this text,
Explain the difference between a "medium" and a "technical support"?
Help you summarize a specific section for an essay or presentation? If you haven't read the full PDF yet, dive in
“Reinventing the Medium” has been enormously influential, but also contested:
Krauss herself addressed some of these in later essays, particularly on the “post-medium condition” and the work of artists like Stan Douglas and Pierre Huyghe.
Given the academic demand for this essay, it is understandable that many search for a "Rosalind Krauss Reinventing the Medium PDF." However, there are important legal and scholarly protocols to observe.
The Source: The essay originally appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Critical Inquiry (Vol. 25, No. 2, Winter 1999, pp. 289-312). It was later reprinted in Krauss’s essential collection, Perpetual Inventory (MIT Press, 2010).
How to Obtain the PDF Legally:
Warning on "Free" PDFs: While you may find a scanned PDF on academic sharing sites like Academia.edu or Scribd, be aware of copyright. Critical Inquiry is published by the University of Chicago Press. Downloading unauthorized copies, while common, denies the publisher and the journal the revenue needed to support future scholarship. Furthermore, many free PDFs are OCR-scanned with errors (missing diagrams or corrupted footnotes), making them unreliable for professional citation.
Once you locate the PDF, do not read it linearly. Krauss writes in a dense, crystalline style—every sentence carries weight. Follow this method:
Krauss replaces the Greenbergian “material base” with the concept of the technical support. A technical support is not a physical substance (canvas, bronze) but a set of operational rules and conventions that produce artistic meaning. Examples include:
An artist reinvents a medium by rediscovering or inventing a technical support and then exploring its unique formal and conceptual possibilities.
Krauss borrows the term “post-medium condition” from philosopher Stanley Cavell. However, she clarifies that this condition does not 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.
“The post-medium condition does not imply the negation of the medium. On the contrary, it opens the way for the medium’s reinvention.”
Kentridge erases and redraws charcoal figures on a single sheet of paper, filming each alteration. Krauss argues that Kentridge reinvents the medium of animation by refusing cel animation’s clean substitutions. Instead, Kentridge’s technical support—the physical erasure and residue of charcoal—produces a “palimpsestic” space where time appears as scarring, not fluid motion.