Rosalind Krauss Is A Highly Influential Art Critic and Theorist Whose Career Was Launched in The

Rosalind Krauss was a critic and contributing editor for Artforum and one of the founders of the
quarterly art theory journal October. She has been a highly influential critic and theorist in the
post-Abstract Expressionist era. Originally a disciple of the formalist Clement Greenberg,
Krauss later became enthralled with newer artistic movements that she believed required a
different theoretical approach, which focused less on the aesthetic purity of an art form
(prevalent in Greenberg's criticism), and more on aesthetics that captured a theme or historical
and/or cultural issue. Krauss still teaches Art History at Columbia University in New York.
Rosalind Krauss is a highly influential art critic and theorist whose career was launched in the
post-Abstract Expressionist era when she began theorizing about how newer artistic movements
required a different analytical approach than what traditional methods dictated. Krauss primarily
built a reputation for feminist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic methodology[1] she
developed during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, she focused primarily on masculine
aesthetics and how contemporary artists tended to respond to it.
Krauss' attempts to understand the phenomenon of modernist art, on its historical, theoretical and
formal levels, led her in various directions over the course of years. She investigated the
development of photography and its history-running parallel to that of modernist painting,
explored how the world perceived so-called high arts, redefined how we observe sculptures and
searched the true meaning of avant-garde arts.
Rosalind Krauss' theories and criticism saw her take on challenging concepts such as
formlessness or the optical unconscious, yet this professor at Columbia University handled
defining these notions in a manner that her writing appealed to art pundits whilst also being
enjoyable reads to laymen.
After receiving a diploma from Harvard, Krauss quickly became a professor of Art History at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1971, she was promoted to contributing editor
for Artforum, an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art that was
founded in 1962. Krauss published her first book that same year, which was actually an
expanded version of her Harvard dissertation, entitled Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of
David Smith.
In 1972, Rosalind published A View of Modernism in Artforum, an essay that remains one of her
most praised works to this day. In it, Krauss criticized Greenbergian art criticism for largely
ignoring the content and the "feeling" aspects whilst analyzing artworks. Since she clearly
devoted more time to pinpointing faults with art criticism rather than elaborating a new strategy
for examining art, it's fair to say that Krauss’ view of Modernism was evidently still developing
at this particular time.
In 1975, Krauss became an associate professor of Hunter College in New York City. The
following year, she left Artforum, a decision that was questioned by many as the magazine was
enjoying quite a bit of success back then. However, Rosalind was not without a plan - the up-
and-coming art critic, along with her former Harvard classmate Annette Michelson, started the
arts and culture quarterly journal October which quickly came to be regarded as a prime
resource for contemporary art lovers.
The October Magazine
After ten years of writing for Artforum, Rosalind Krauss surprised many by deciding to leave the
magazine, a choice many characterized as being too impulsive[2]. However, this decision proved
to be the right one despite first appearances - Krauss quickly co-founded a new art journal with
Annette Michelson, called October. This new platform for art pundits aimed to advance new
ways of thinking about modern and contemporary art. The journal was symbolically named after
the month that marked the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Krauss has published her most influential art writings within the pages of October. In the
magazine's 8th volume, she published her essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field, a brilliant
piece of writing that explained the vastly expanded viewpoint of sculpture. This essay did not
describe a specific method of defining sculpture but rather began a post-structuralist conversation
about finding ways of discussing plastic art tendencies without needing to rigidly define what
they are.
In October's 9th volume, Krauss published another important essay called Grids, considered by
many to be one of the most important works on the 20th century's phenomenon of abstraction.
The essay starts off by exploring the history of the use of grids in art and it eventually
contemplates the various ways artists have reduced their work. Grids ultimately establishes that
these patterns in art are symbolic, but the essay never strives to precisely pin-point what they
symbolize, instead opting to allow the readers to come to their own conclusions.

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Rosalind Krauss was a critic and contributing editor for Artforum and one of the founders of the

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