– Krauss frames the 1990s as a moment when photography, once marginalized, becomes a primary language for contemporary art. She positions the volume as a response to the “medium crisis” that plagued artists after the rise of conceptualism.
: This is the core of her theory. A medium is not a stable, fixed entity but a dynamic set of conventions and technical supports that are internally different from one another. In this view, "the specificity of mediums, even modernist ones, can never be simply collapsed into the physicality of their support". Instead, any medium's identity is always differential, a "layering of conventions that never coincide simply with the physical quality of the support".
In later lectures and texts expanding on this concept, Krauss and subsequent theorists applied this logic to contemporary practitioners. For example, artists who engage with early digital technologies—like hacking vintage video game cartridges or shooting on celluloid film in an era of 8K digital video—are not merely wallowing in nostalgia. Instead, they are actively constructing a "medium" out of an obsolete technical apparatus. They establish a set of baseline limitations, allowing for formal expression and resistance against the slick, seamless homogeneity of modern consumer tech. The Technical Apparatus vs. The Artistic Medium rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
For much of the 20th century, the dominant theory of modernism, championed by the influential critic Clement Greenberg, was “medium specificity.” Greenberg argued that the essence of each art form lay in its unique, inherent material properties. For painting, this meant embracing its “flatness”; for sculpture, its three-dimensionality. This approach sought to purify each medium, stripping away any elements borrowed from other arts to discover its fundamental truth.
In contemporary art criticism, few essays have exerted as profound an influence as Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium." Originally published in 1999, this seminal text addresses a critical turning point in late 20th-century art: the apparent obsolescence of traditional artistic mediums like painting and sculpture, and the rise of "post-medium" practices. For students, scholars, and art enthusiasts searching for a deeper understanding of this text, analyzing Krauss's arguments reveals why the concept of the "medium" remains vital in the digital age. The Context of Post-Medium Condition – Krauss frames the 1990s as a moment
The second path is an internal art-world debate focused on the systematic "destruction" of the aesthetic conditions long associated with photography. This destructive impulse was a broader 20th-century phenomenon, influencing everyone from to the conceptual artists who succeeded him. By rejecting the idea that art's value lies in its formal, aesthetic qualities, this path paved the way for a condition in which any object or gesture could be considered art, effectively destroying the foundation of medium specificity.
The structural, often industrial apparatus an artist adopts to replace traditional materials (e.g., the slide projector or commercial film). A medium is not a stable, fixed entity
, this work represents a critical pivot point where Krauss—one of the foundational voices of postmodernism—returns to the concept of "medium" to save art from what she calls the "deadening generality" of installation art. 1. The Post-Medium Condition: Art in Crisis
Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers is another pillar of Krauss’s critique. Broodthaers famously declared the "bankruptcy" of traditional mediums. He created fictional museums, using eagles, signage, and packing crates as his formal tools. For Broodthaers, the "medium" became the institutional framework of the museum itself. By manipulating the language of exhibition, cataloging, and display, he invented a medium out of institutional critique. 3. Ed Ruscha and the Automobile
