The single most important concept in “Reinventing the Medium” is the
Rosalind Krauss’s "Reinventing the Medium" remains a vital text because it refuses to look at art history as a simple linear progression from painting to pixels. Instead, it challenges artists and critics to realize that meaning is only generated through resistance. Without boundaries, art becomes indistinguishable from the media-saturated landscape that surrounds it.
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. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
To understand "Reinventing the Medium," one must first understand what Krauss was fighting against.
By shifting the terminology to "technical support," Krauss moves away from the spiritual connotations of "medium" (implying a pure essence) and toward a more grounded, structural understanding. The medium is no longer about purity; it is about a set of technical conditions and rules that the artist adopts as a platform for invention. The single most important concept in “Reinventing the
The essay posits that every genuine artistic medium is a form of . The artist does not invent a new medium from scratch. Rather, they find a dormant technical support (like a postcard, a phonograph, or a video monitor) and "reinvent" it by uncovering its internal, forgotten logic.
To understand the significance of Krauss's work, it's essential to consider the cultural and artistic landscape of the 1980s and 1990s. The postmodern movement was in full swing, and the art world was grappling with the implications of new technologies, the rise of conceptual art, and the blurring of boundaries between high and low culture. It was during this period that Krauss began to make her mark on the art world, publishing a series of influential essays that would eventually be collected in her book, "The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Essays" (1985). The medium is no longer about purity; it
had to abandon three-dimensional illusionism (which belonged to sculpture) and narrative (which belonged to literature). It had to focus purely on its own inherent traits: flatness, the shape of the support, and the properties of pigment.
A medium is defined by its internal logic and conventions, not just its physical substance.
Krauss borrows from the film theorist Raymond Bellour and the structuralist Marcelin Pleynet. She argues that a medium is not a material but an apparatus that supports aesthetic convention. For example:
Krauss directly challenges the influence of critic Clement Greenberg. Greenberg believed modernism meant each medium purifying itself (painting becoming flatness). Krauss argues that after minimalism and conceptual art, the medium didn’t disappear. Instead, it was reinvented as a technical support—a prosthesis for the artist.