The Originality of the Avant-Garde: Deconstructing Myths and Reframing Modernist Discourse

Rosalind Krauss’s The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths is a foundational text in the study of modern and postmodern art, a work that rigorously interrogates the ideological underpinnings of modernist narratives. Published in 1985, this collection of essays not only critiques the grand narratives of originality, progress, and formal innovation that have shaped the discourse of modernism, but also offers new theoretical frameworks for understanding the complexities of contemporary art. Krauss's essays are far from isolated inquiries; they form a constellation of ideas that together dismantle entrenched myths, proposing instead a more nuanced and interconnected understanding of art and its histories.

Source: The New Criterion

Reassessing the Myth of Originality

Central to the collection is Krauss’s eponymous essay, The Originality of the Avant-Garde. In this pivotal text, Krauss challenges the modernist fetishization of originality, arguing that what is often celebrated as novel or revolutionary in avant-garde art is, in fact, deeply entangled with repetition and historical continuity. Using the grid as a case study—a formal device synonymous with modernist abstraction—Krauss demonstrates that the grid’s apparent purity and autonomy belie its recursive, self-referential nature. The grid, she asserts, is both a symbol of modernism’s aspiration to break with tradition and a mechanism that reifies its own logic, exposing the paradox of a movement that simultaneously seeks to transcend history while remaining bound to it.

Beyond Sculpture: Expanding the Field

In Sculpture in the Expanded Field, Krauss extends her critique to the boundaries of artistic categories, particularly the medium of sculpture. She rejects the essentialist definitions that dominated modernist criticism, instead proposing a structural model that situates sculpture within a broader, interdisciplinary “expanded field.” This essay redefines sculpture not as an isolated practice but as one that operates relationally, engaging architecture, landscape, and cultural context. Krauss’s structural diagram, mapping the interrelations between sculpture, architecture, and landscape, has become a canonical tool for understanding postminimalist and site-specific practices. Her argument not only liberated sculpture from the constraints of traditional media definitions but also signaled a shift toward postmodern pluralism.

The Photographic Discourse and the Question of Indexicality

Another significant thread in the collection addresses the role of photography in modern and contemporary art. In essays such as Notes on the Index and The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism, Krauss explores photography’s unique position as an indexical medium, capable of both documenting reality and subverting it. She analyzes how Surrealist photography, in particular, exploits this duality, using photographic techniques like montage and distortion to challenge the viewer’s perception of truth and reality. Krauss’s treatment of the photographic medium is emblematic of her broader methodological approach: she situates the medium within a larger discursive and theoretical framework, examining its cultural, historical, and epistemological implications.

Reconfiguring Art’s Relationship to Time and Space

Throughout the collection, Krauss repeatedly returns to the themes of temporality and spatiality, examining how modernist and postmodernist practices reconfigure the viewer’s experience of time and space. In essays like Grids and LeWitt in Progress, she explores how artists such as Sol LeWitt use systems and structures to articulate a new temporality - one that is iterative, process-based, and open-ended. Similarly, her discussion of the grid as both a spatial and temporal device underscores its dual role in modernist aesthetics: it anchors the work in a present of formal rigor while simultaneously gesturing toward an infinite, ahistorical future.

Deconstructing Myths, Constructing Critique

Krauss’s critique is not limited to the formal properties of artworks but extends to the broader ideological and institutional frameworks that sustain the myths of modernism. In essays like The Motivation of the Sign and Poststructuralism and the "Paraliterary", she engages with poststructuralist theory, particularly the works of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, to question the logocentric assumptions underpinning art criticism. Krauss’s adoption of poststructuralist methodologies allows her to reveal the constructedness of modernist myths and to propose alternative narratives that embrace multiplicity and contradiction.

The Legacy of Krauss’s Critique

The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths remains a cornerstone of art historical scholarship, not only for its incisive critique of modernism but also for its methodological innovations. Krauss’s essays exemplify a rigorous interdisciplinarity, weaving together insights from semiotics, psychoanalysis, and structuralism to produce a richly textured analysis of art and its histories. Her work challenges readers to question the foundations of their assumptions about originality, progress, and the boundaries of artistic practice.

More than three decades after its publication, Krauss’s collection continues to resonate in contemporary art criticism. In an era where appropriation, remixing, and hybridity dominate artistic production, her deconstruction of originality feels more relevant than ever. By exposing the myths that sustain modernist and avant-garde narratives, Krauss not only reframes our understanding of the past but also opens up new possibilities for engaging with the art of the present and future.

In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Krauss invites us to see beyond the surface of artistic innovation and to consider the deeper, often contradictory forces at play. It is this intellectual depth and theoretical rigor that ensure her work remains a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of art in the modern and postmodern eras.