Rosalind E. Krauss
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Rosalind Epstein Krauss (born November 30, 1941) is an American
art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...
,
art theorist Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic and theorist she has published steadily since 1965 in '' Artforum,'' '' Art International'' and ''
Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...
''. She was associate editor of ''Artforum'' from 1971 to 1974 and has been editor of '' October'', a journal of contemporary arts criticism and theory that she co-founded in 1976.


Early life

Krauss was born to Matthew M. Epstein and Bertha Luber
Rosalind E. Krauss biography
in Washington D.C. and grew up in the area, visiting art museums with her father. After graduating from Wellesley College, Wellesley in 1962, she attended
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
The Real Thing: An Interview with Rosalind E. Krauss by David Plante at: http://www.artcritical.com/
whose Department of Fine Arts (now Department of History of Art and Architecture) had a strong tradition of the intensive analysis of actual art objects under the aegis of the Fogg Art Museum, Fogg Museum. Krauss wrote her dissertation on the work of David Smith.Chilvers, Ian & Glaves-Smith, John eds., Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 384 Krauss received her Ph.D. in 1969. The dissertation was published as ''Terminal Iron Works'' in 1971. In the late-1960s and early-1970s Krauss began to contribute articles to art journals such as ''Art International'' and '' Artforum'' — which, under the editorship of Philip Leider, was relocated from California to New York. She began by writing the "Boston Letter" for ''Art International,'' but soon published well-received articles on Jasper Johns (''Lugano Review'', 1965) and Donald Judd (''Allusion and Illusion in Donald Judd,'' '' Artforum'', May 1966). Her commitment to the emerging minimal art in particular set her apart from Michael Fried, who was oriented toward the continuation of modernist abstraction in Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland and Anthony Caro. Krauss's article ''A View of Modernism'' ('' Artforum'', September 1972), was one signal of this break.


Career


Founding ''October''

Krauss became dissatisfied with ''Artforum'' when in its November 1974 issue it published a full-page advertisement by featuring the artist Lynda Benglis aggressively posed with a large latex dildo and wearing only a pair of
sunglasses Sunglasses or sun glasses (informally called shades or sunnies; more names below) are a form of protective eyewear designed primarily to prevent bright sunlight and high-energy visible light from damaging or discomforting the eyes. They can s ...
promoting an upcoming exhibition of hers at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Although Benglis' image is now popularly cited as an important example of gender performativity in contemporary art, it provoked mixed responses when it first appeared. Krauss and other Artforum personnel attacked Benglis' work in the following month's issue of ''Artforum'', describing the advertisement as exploitative and brutalizing, and soon left the magazine to co-found '' October'' in 1976. ''October'' was formed as a politically-charged journal that introduced American readers to the ideas of French post-structuralism, made popular by
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
and Roland Barthes. Krauss used ''October'' as a way of publishing essays on post-structuralist art theory,
Deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...
ist theory, psychoanalysis,
postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
and feminism. The founders included Krauss, Annette Michelson and the artist
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe (born August 4th, 1945) is a British-born American painter, art critic, theorist, and educator, born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, United Kingdom. In 1968, he moved to the United States. Gilbert-Rolfe holds several degrees, incl ...
. Krauss was appointed as its founding editor. Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe withdrew after only a few issues, and by the spring of 1977,
Douglas Crimp John Douglas Crimp (August 19, 1944 July 5, 2019) was an American art historian, critic, curator, and AIDS activist. He was known for his scholarly contributions to the fields of postmodern theories and art, institutional critique, dance, film ...
joined the editorial team. In 1990, after Crimp left the journal, Krauss and Michelson were joined by
Yve-Alain Bois Yve-Alain Bois (born April 16, 1952) is a professor of Art History at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Education Bois received an M.A. from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1 ...
,
Hal Foster Harold Rudolf Foster, FRSA (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982) was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip ''Prince Valiant''. His drawing style is noted for its high level of draftsmanship a ...
,
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh (born November 15, 1941) is a German art historian. Between 2005 and 2021 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. Education and c ...
, Denis Hollier, and John Rajchman.


Academic


Hunter College

Krauss taught at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MIT and Princeton before joining the faculty at
Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...
in 1974. She was promoted to professor in 1977 at Hunter and was also appointed professor at the Graduate Center of
CUNY , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...
. She held the title of Distinguished Professor at Hunter until she left to join the Columbia University faculty in 1992. In 1985, a monograph of essays by Krauss, titled ''The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths'' was published by The MIT Press.


Columbia University

Previously Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia, in 2005 Rosalind Krauss was promoted to the highest faculty rank of University Professor. She has received fellowships from the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...
and the National Endowment for the Arts and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and of the Institute for Advanced Study. She received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for criticism from the College Art Association in 1973. She has been a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities since 1992, was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. She recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of London.


Curator

Krauss has been curator of many art exhibitions at leading museums, among them exhibitions on
Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
at the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
(1970–73), on
surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
and photography at the
Corcoran Museum of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
(1982–85), on Richard Serra at the Museum of Modern Art (1985–86), and on Robert Morris at the Guggenheim (1992–94). She prepared an exhibition for the
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
in Paris called "Formlessness: Modernism Against the Grain" in 1996.


Critical approach


Greenbergian tradition

Krauss's attempts to understand the phenomenon of modernist art, in its historical, theoretical, and formal dimensions, have led her in various directions. She has, for example, been interested in the development of photography, whose history – running parallel to that of modernist painting and sculpture – makes visible certain previously overlooked phenomena in the "high arts", such as the role of the indexical mark, or the function of the archive. She has also investigated certain concepts, such as "formlessness", "the optical unconscious", or "pastiche", which organize modernist practice in relation to different explanatory grids from those of progressive modernism, or the avant-garde. Like many, Krauss had been drawn to the criticism of Clement Greenberg, as a counterweight to the highly subjective, poetic approach of Harold Rosenberg. The poet-critic model proved long-lasting in the New York scene, with products from
Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...
to Kynaston McShine to Peter Schjeldahl, but for Krauss and others, its basis in subjective expression was fatally unable to account for how a particular artwork's objective structure gives rise to its associated subjective effects. Greenberg's way of assessing how an art object works, or how it is put together, became for Krauss a fruitful resource; even if she and fellow "Greenberger", Michael Fried, would break first with the older critic, and then with each other, at particular moments of judgment, the commitment to formal analysis as the necessary if not sufficient ground of serious criticism would still remain for both of them. Decades after her first engagement with Greenberg, Krauss still used his ideas about an artwork's 'medium' as a jumping-off point for her strongest effort to come to terms with post-1980 art in the person of William Kentridge. Krauss would formulate this formalist commitment in strong terms, against attempts to account for powerful artworks in terms of residual ideas about an artist's individual genius, for instance in the essays "The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition" and "Photography's Discursive Spaces." For Krauss, and for the school of critics who developed under her influence, the Greenbergian legacy offers at its best a way of accounting for works of art using public and hence verifiable criteria.


Translating ephemeralities into prose

Whether about ( Cubist
collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
, Surrealist photography, early Giacometti sculpture,
Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
, Brâncuși, Pollock) or about art contemporaneous to her own writing ( Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman), Krauss translates the ephemeralities of visual and bodily experience into precise, vivid English, which has solidified her prestige as a critic. Her usual practice is to make this experience intelligible by using categories translated from the work of a thinker outside the study of art, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
,
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
, Jean-François Lyotard,
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
,
Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...
, or Roland Barthes.Chilvers, Ian & Glaves-Smith, John eds., Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 385 Indeed, she participated in the translation of Lacan's key text " Television" which was published in October and later reissued in book form by Norton. Her work has helped establish the position of these writers within the study of art, even at the cost of provoking anxiety about threats to the discipline's autonomy. She is currently preparing a second volume of collected essays as a sequel to ''The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths'' (1986). In many cases, Krauss is credited as a leader in bringing these concepts to bear on the study of modern art. For instance, her ''Passages in Modern Sculpture'' (1977) makes important use of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology (as she had come to understand it in thinking about minimal art) for viewing modern sculpture in general. In her study of Surrealist photography, she rejected
William Rubin William Stanley Rubin (August 11, 1927January 22, 2006) was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art. From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art located ...
's efforts at formal categorization as insufficient, instead advocating the psychoanalytic categories of "dream" and "automatism", as well as
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
's "grammatological" idea of "spacing." See "The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism" (''October'', winter 1981).


Picasso's collages

Concerning Cubist art, she took Picasso's collage breakthrough to be explicable in terms of Saussure's ideas about the differential relations and non-referentiality of language, rejecting efforts by other scholars to tie the pasted newspaper clippings to social history. Similarly, she held Picasso's stylistic developments in Cubist portraiture to be products of theoretical problems internal to art, rather than outcomes of the artist's love life. Later, she explained Picasso's participation in the ''rappel à l'ordre'' or return to order of the 1920s in similar structuralist terms. See "In the Name of Picasso" (''October'', spring 1981), "The Motivation of the Sign" (in Lynn Zelevansky, ed., ''Picasso and Braque: A Symposium'', 1992), and ''The Picasso Papers'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998).


Freudian theory

From the 1980s, she became increasingly concerned with using a psychoanalytic understanding of drives and the unconscious, owing less to the Freudianism of an
André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
or a Salvador Dalí, and much more to the structuralist
Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...
and the "dissident surrealist" Bataille. See "No More Play", her 1984 essay on Giacometti, as well as "Corpus Delicti", written for the 1985 exhibition ''L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism'', ''Cindy Sherman: 1975–1993'' and ''The Optical Unconscious'' (both 1993) and ''Formless: A User's Guide'' with Yve-Alain Bois, catalog to the exhibition ''L'Informe: Mode d'emploi'' (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1996).


Interpreting Pollock

Years after her time at '' Artforum'' in the 1960s, Krauss also returned to the drip painting of Jackson Pollock as both a culmination of modernist work within the format of the "easel picture", and a breakthrough that opened the way for several important developments in later art, from Allan Kaprow's happenings to Richard Serra's lead-flinging process art to Andy Warhol's oxidation (i.e. urination) paintings. For reference, see the Pollock chapter in ''The Optical Unconscious,'' several entries in the ''Formless'' catalog, and "Beyond the Easel Picture", her contribution to the
MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...
symposium accompanying the 1998 Pollock retrospective (''Jackson Pollock: New Approaches''). This direction provided intellectual validation for the explosive Pollock markets; but it exacerbated already tense relations between herself and more radical currents in visual/cultural studies, the latter growing steadily impatient with the traditional western art-historical canon. In addition to writing focused studies about individual artists, Krauss also produced broader, synthetic studies that helped gather together and define the limits of particular fields of practice. Examples of this include "Sense and Sensibility: Reflections on Post '60s Sculpture" (''Artforum'', Nov. 1973), "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism" (''October'', spring 1976), "Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America", in two parts, ''October'' spring and fall 1977), "Grids, You Say", In ''Grids: Format and Image in 20th Century Art'' (exh. cat.: Pace Gallery, 1978), and "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" (''October'', spring 1979). Some of these essays are collected in her book ''The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths''.


Bibliography


Selected books by Krauss

*''Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971. *''The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné''. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 73. New York: Garland, 1977. *''Passages in Modern Sculpture''. Cambridge Mass: The MIT Press, 1977. *''The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985. *''L'Amour fou: Photography & Surrealism''. London: Arts Council, 1986. Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, July to September 1986. *''Le Photographique : Pour une théorie des écarts''. Translated by Marc Bloch and Jean Kempf. Paris: Macula, 1990. *''The Optical Unconscious'' (1993) *''Formless: A User's Guide'' (with Yve-Alain Bois) (1997) *''The Picasso Papers'' (1999) *''A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition'' (1999) *''Bachelors'' (2000) *''Perpetual Inventory'' (2010) *''Under Blue Cup''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011.


Selected essays and articles by Krauss


MIT Press: selected articles by Rosalind Krauss
*"Contemporary Criticism." Markham, Ont.: Audio Archives of Canada, 1979. 1 sound cassette: 1 7/8 ips. *''Critical Perspectives in American Art'', pp. 25–27. Introduction by Hugh M. Davies. Amherst: Fine Arts Center Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1976. Rosalind Krauss' text is followed by illustrations of works by Donald Judd, Robert Artschwager and Joel Shapiro. An Exhibition selected by Rosalind Krauss, Sam Hunter and Marcia Tucker. Fine Arts Center Gallery, University of Massachusetts/Amherst, April 10, 1976 – May 9, 1976, American Pavilion, Venice Biennale, summer 1976. *"Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom: Materialization of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman." In ''Peter Eisenman's Houses of Cards'', pp. 166–184. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
"Formless: A User's Guide" [excerpt]
''October 78'', MIT Press, 1996.


Book reviews by Krauss

* "Man in a Mold." Review of James Lord, ''Giacometti: A Biography.'' In ''The New Republic,'' Dec. 16, 1985, pp. 24–29. * "Post-History on Parade." Review of three books by Arthur Danto. In ''The New Republic,'' May 25, 1987, pp. 27–30. * "Only Project." Review of Richard Wollheim, ''Painting as an Art.'' In ''The New Republic,'' September 12 & 19, 1988, pp. 33–38.


About Krauss

*Yve-Alain Bois. "Rosalind Krauss with Yve-Alain Bois," ''The Brooklyn Rail'', 2012. *Matthew Bowman, "Rosalind Krauss," ''Fifty Key Writers on Photography'' edited by Mark Durden, pp. 149–194. New York: Routledge, 2013. *Matthew Bowman, “''October''’s Postmodernism” in ''Visual Studies: A Journal of Documentation'', vol. 31 nos 1-2, pp. 117–126. 2015 *David Carrier
''Rosalind Krauss and American philosophical art criticism''
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. , *
Anna C. Chave Anna C. Chave is an art historian and professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is best known for her research and publications on modern sculpture and the New York School. She has publis ...
, "Minimalism and Biography," ''Art Bulletin'' March 2000. *Janet Malcolm, "A Girl of the Zeitgeist", Part II, ''The New Yorker'', October 27, 1986. *Scott Rothkopf, "Krauss and the Art of Cultural Controversy," The Harvard Crimson, May 16, 1997. *David Raskin, "The Shiny Illusionism of Krauss and Judd", ''Art Journal'' Spring 2006. *Judy K. Collischan Van Wagner, "Rosalind Krauss," ''Women Shaping Art: Profiles of Power,'' pp. 149–164. New York: Praeger, 1984


Reviews of Krauss's work


''The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths''

*Bois, Yve-Alain. ''Art Journal'' (Winter 1985), pp. 369ff. *Carrier, David. ''Burlington Magazine'' (November 1985), 127(992): 817. *Owens, Craig. "Analysis Logical and Ideological." ''Art in America'' (May 1985), pp. 25–31. Reprinted in ''Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture,'' pp. 268–283. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
List of reviews of ''The Originality of the Avant-Garde''


''The Optical Unconscious''


Roger Kimball, "Feeling Sorry for Rosalind Krauss," ''New Criterion'' 1993


''The Picasso Papers''


Marilyn McCully, "The Fallen Angel?" review of ''The Picasso Papers'' in ''New York Review of Books'', April 8, 1999.Harry Cooper and Marilyn McCully, "The Picasso Papers: An Exchange," ''New York Review of Books'', October 7, 1999.


''Art Since 1900''


Claire Bishop, Artforum.com, Apr. 9, 2005Eric Gibson, ''OpinionJournal.com'' Mar. 11, 2005Dan Hopewell, Iconoduel Apr. 9, 2005Pepe Karmel, review of ''Art Since 1900'', in ''Art in America,'' Nov. 2005, pp. 61–63.Barry Schwabsky, ''The Nation'' Dec. 8, 2005


General material about Krauss


David Cohen, review of ''Challenging Art'' in Art Bulletin, Sept. 2002Columbia University: Rosalind KraussMIT Press: Rosalind KraussRobert Storr, letter to the editor, ''Artforum'' Nov. 2002


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Krauss, Rosalind 1941 births Living people American art critics Photography critics Harvard University alumni Wellesley College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Wellesley College faculty Princeton University faculty Hunter College faculty Graduate Center, CUNY faculty Columbia University faculty Frank Jewett Mather Award winners Translators of Jacques Lacan Jewish American historians Jewish women writers Women art historians American art historians American women journalists American women critics 20th-century French women writers 20th-century translators American women historians