Abstract: This study examines the concept of artistic medium and some of its recent reconceptualizations in philosophical aesthetics, weighing its current relevance in the context of mostly unfavorable positions in contemporary art, generally characterized as post-medium. In the three sections of the paper, I identify the essential terms and distinctions required to redefining the medium. In this regard, I invoke Stanley Cavell, Rosalind Krauss, and Sherri Irvin, who theorize automatisms, conventions, rules and practices as symbolic supports; and Dominic Lopes and Elisa Caldarola, who put forth and develop the notion of medium profile, respectively. Revolving around the theory of the medium advanced by Rosalind Krauss, my analysis shows the ways in which Krauss, building on the theoretical terms that underpin Stanley Cavell’s conception of the ontology of film, anticipated or influenced some of the current definitions of the medium. Namely, the correlated notions of automatisms, conventions, rules and practices by virtue of which Krauss conceptualizes the medium undergird Sherri Irvin’s thesis positing rules for presentation, conservation and participation as symbolic resources with expressive force that form part of the medial structure of contemporary artworks.
Keywords: artistic medium, technical/symbolic support, automatism, conventions, rules, practices.
Acknowledgement: This paper is the result of a research residency at the Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica in Venice, obtained with the support of the Romanian state through the national scholarship program “Nicolae Iorga” (2022), and is part of the PhD thesis titled The Contemporary Art Exhibition as Artistic Medium (2023), written by Georgiana Buț at “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, Doctoral School of Philosophy, under the supervision of Professor Dan Eugen Rațiu.
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