Medium specificity  

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classificatory disputes about art, The medium is the message

Medium specificity is a consideration in aesthetics and art criticism. It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg, who helped popularize the term in his 1960 essay "Modernist Painting", medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium. For example, in painting, literal flatness and abstraction are emphasised rather than illusionism and figuration.

As early as 1766 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his essay "Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry" argues that "painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbors, neither of whom indeed is allowed to take unseemly liberties in the heart of the other's domain".

Today, the term is used both to describe artistic practices and as a way to analyze artwork. Critic N. Katherine Hayles, for example, speaks of "media specific analysis." As discussed by critic Marshall Soules, medium specificity and media specific analysis are playing an important role in the emergence of new media art forms, such as Internet art. Medium specificity suggests that a work of art can be said to be successful if it fulfills the promise contained in the medium used to bring the artwork into existence. Much debate can remain as to what a given medium best lends itself to.

Art dialogue in the post-modern period has tended to steer away from medium specificity as a particularly relevant principle.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Medium specificity" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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