Krauss uses the example of early video art. When artists like Richard Serra or Joan Jonas first used video, they did not just broadcast content; they critiqued the television monitor itself. They used tape delays, feedback loops, and vertical roll distortions to turn the commercial technical apparatus of TV into a distinct artistic medium.
Krauss highlights how Coleman uses the "low-tech" slide projector to create complex narratives, forcing a "recursive" examination of the photographic medium.
The ultimate "automation of the image" where the machine dictates style.
In "Reinventing the Medium," Krauss argues that artists do not work in a vacuum; they work in relation to a set of conventions, techniques, and materials. 1. The Recursive Equation: Medium-Support-Convention rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
Krauss, Reinventing The Medium (Critical Inquiry 1999) - Scribd
a purely signifying form devoid of reference (negating pure post-structuralism). The Triadic Structure: Medium–Support–Convention
To grasp the weight of Krauss’s argument, one must understand the art world she was responding to in the late 20th century. For decades, modernist art criticism—dominated by figures like Clement Greenberg—maintained that the quality and integrity of an artwork depended on its adherence to a specific medium. According to Greenberg, painting should focus purely on flatness and color, while sculpture should focus strictly on three-dimensional space. This was known as . Krauss uses the example of early video art
Rosalind Krauss is a renowned art critic, theorist, and professor. Born in 1941, Krauss has spent her career writing about modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on photography and sculpture. She has taught at a number of institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles. Krauss has published numerous influential essays and books, including "The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Essays" and "A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Postmedium Condition." She has received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to art criticism and theory.
Krauss does not just theorize; she demonstrates. When you search for the "rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf," you will find vivid analyses of three key artists:
The essay proves that artistic freedom does not come from absolute, infinite choices (like a blank digital canvas), but rather from working deeply within and against specific limitations. Krauss highlights how Coleman uses the "low-tech" slide
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 is a complex, self-imposed structure or set of rules that an artist chooses to operate within.
Krauss saw this as a lazy fallacy. She believed that simply declaring the death of the medium was an act of theoretical bankruptcy. Instead, she proposed that the medium was not a physical substance (canvas, stone, bronze) but a —a set of conventions, memories, and technical supports that an artist activates.
Krauss argues that Coleman does not simply use this technology as a neutral vehicle for content. Instead, he treats it as a "technical support." By exposing the internal mechanics, constraints, and structural gaps of the slide-tape apparatus, Coleman elevates it to the status of a medium. He accomplishes this by developing what Krauss calls "automatisms"—a term borrowed from Stanley Cavell, referring to a set of rules or formal possibilities inherent to a specific technology that an artist can explore to generate meaning. Photography and the Archive
| Greenberg (Old Medium) | Krauss (Reinvented Medium) | |------------------------|-----------------------------| | Medium = physical material (paint, canvas) | Medium = technical support (rules, apparatus, convention) | | Purity (eliminate everything extraneous to material) | Hybridity (combine supports in new, consistent ways) | | Medium is fixed, universal, a priori | Medium is invented, specific, a posteriori | | Progress through self-criticism | Progress through re-invention and recoding |