Let’s be honest: Krauss is difficult. Her sentences are labyrinthine, and her references assume you have read Lacan, Freud, and Greenberg. If you have secured the PDF, do not simply read it from start to finish in one sitting.
Adopted the journalist’s report as a medium, using its neutral, distanced structure to explore deeply personal and emotional subjects. Why It Matters Today rosalind krauss reinventing the medium pdf
By the late 1990s, however, Krauss observed a new crisis. The total abandonment of medium specificity had led to a generic, international style dominated by commercial installation art, ready-mades, and a nascent digital media culture. In "Reinventing the Medium," Krauss argues that when "anything goes," art loses its capacity for internal critique. Without a specific set of rules or a "medium" to push against, artistic practice risks dissolving into pure entertainment or commercial commodity. The Corey Arcangel and Marcel Broodthaers Crux Let’s be honest: Krauss is difficult
A significant portion of the discourse surrounding "Reinventing the Medium" focuses on photography and film. Krauss examines how early practitioners and later avant-garde artists treated the camera not merely as a tool to record reality, but as a structural medium with its own rules—such as the shutter speed, the negative, and the chemical development process. By manipulating these mechanical constraints, artists resisted the reductive, commercial uses of photography in advertising and journalism. Why the Essay Remains Vital Today Adopted the journalist’s report as a medium, using
