Medium

Medium is a term with a double meaning in art. First, it denotes a type or kind of art, for example painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, video, or performance. Second, it refers to the specific materials and substances from which a work is made: oil paint, watercolour, bronze, marble, clay, ink, and so on. In painting the word medium also has a narrower technical meaning, namely the liquid, such as oil or gum arabic, used to dilute pigment and give the paint the desired consistency and properties. The choice of medium is fundamental to artistic expression, since each material has its own expressive possibilities, limitations, and cultural associations. Modernist criticism of the twentieth century, especially in the writings of Clement Greenberg, emphasised medium specificity, the idea that each art form should explore its own unique nature, for example painting the flatness of the canvas. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, artists increasingly began to break down the boundaries between media, creating multimedia, hybrid, and intermedial works. The notion of the post-medium condition, proposed by Rosalind Krauss, describes the contemporary situation in which the traditional boundaries between art forms have lost their former rigidity.