Rosalind Krauss's 1999 essay "Reinventing the Medium" addresses the "post-medium condition," proposing a shift from traditional material purity to a concept of "technical support" or "differential specificity" in art. The text analyzes how artists like James Coleman and William Kentridge redefine mediums through the use of obsolete technologies and discursive systems. Access the PDF version of the article via the University of Chicago Press . Rosalind Krauss: between modernism and post- medium
Published in 1999, "Reinventing the Medium" is a thought-provoking essay that challenges traditional notions of artistic media and the creative process. Krauss argues that the medium of art is not a fixed or stable entity, but rather a dynamic and constantly evolving concept that is subject to reinvention by artists. She contends that the medium is not simply a technical or material support, but a complex system of conventions, norms, and expectations that shape the way artists work and the way we understand art. rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
She argues that modernist artists became aware of the conventions of their specific mediums (the flatness of painting, the indexical nature of photography) as a set of rules. The "reinvention" occurs when an artist acknowledges these conventions not as limitations to be obeyed, but as conventions to be played with. The medium is no longer a given fact of nature; it is a social construct that the artist can choose to inhabit, empty out, or reshape. She argues that modernist artists became aware of
Krauss describes this maneuver as a "knight’s move." Just as a knight in chess moves in an L-shape, bypassing the linear path of other pieces, the artist bypasses the traditional definitions of the medium. By treating the museum as a medium, Broodthaers exposed the medium’s conventions—its systems of display, its rhetoric of authority—while simultaneously using those very conventions to critique the institution. will decode it
Krauss borrows a term from psychology and surrealism: . In art, she uses it to describe the "default settings" of a medium.
When you open that PDF, you are not simply "reading an article." You are engaging in a circuit. The author sent a signal (the essay) through a channel (the academic journal, then the digital scanner, then your screen). You, the receiver, will decode it, highlight it, and possibly send it back out into the world via citation or conversation.