Rosalind E. Krauss
Rosalind E. Krauss is an influential American art critic, theorist, and historian known for her work on 20th-century art, particularly in the fields of modernism and postmodernism. She co-founded the journal October and has written extensively on artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Marcel Duchamp.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. The Originality Of The Avant Garde And Other Modernist Myths
And Other Modernist Myths
This thought-provoking collection of essays delves into the complex narratives surrounding modern art, challenging the conventional understanding of originality and innovation. By examining the myths that have shaped the avant-garde movement, the author critiques the notion of artistic genius and explores how these myths have influenced the perception of modernism. Through a series of insightful analyses, the text deconstructs the cultural and historical contexts that have contributed to the construction of these myths, offering a nuanced perspective on the evolution of modern art.
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2. Фотографическое
A concise set of theoretical essays that rethinks the photographic as a system of operations rather than a simple record, grounding it in indexicality, seriality, and the logic of the archive. Tracing its impact from early modernism through Surrealism and Conceptual practices, it shows how mechanical reproduction and the tableau reshape ideas of originality, authorship, and temporality. Through close readings of images and discourses, it demonstrates how the photographic condition permeates multiple media, blurring boundaries between document and art and transforming the viewer’s gaze.
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3. "Путешествие по Северному морю"
Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition
An incisive essay on contemporary art’s “post-medium condition,” it argues that the erosion of traditional medium specificity under conceptual strategies, institutional framing, and technical reproducibility yields a hollow intermediality. Through close readings—especially of Marcel Broodthaers’s “Un Voyage en Mer du Nord”—it shows how supports, formats, and distribution systems structure meaning across photography, film, and installation, and contends for a reinvented, rigorous notion of medium grounded in technical support.
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4. The Picasso Papers
A collection of critical essays that reexamines major works and themes of a leading modern artist through close formal analysis and theoretical reflection, tracing how fragmentation, collage, and the interplay of representation and objecthood reshape notions of painting and sculpture. The volume situates the artist within broader modernist and cultural contexts, interrogating myths of originality and primitivism while exploring how institutional, historical, and perceptual forces shape meaning. Written for both scholars and informed readers, it combines rigorous art-historical detail with a dense theoretical vocabulary to challenge received interpretations and illuminate the complex mechanics of avant-garde practice.