Categorical Dissolution

Categorical dissolution is the process Krauss identified as the structural occasion of the expanded field. A category dissolves not through theoretical argument but through material practice producing things the category cannot accommodate. By the late 1970s, "sculpture" had been applied to earthworks, mirrors, photographs, performances, and temporary installations—the category had become so elastic it described everything and therefore nothing. The dissolution was not a failure of definition but a transformation of the field: the material conditions of artistic production had changed (new technologies, new patronage structures, new institutional willingness to exhibit non-traditional work), and the change made positions occupiable that were previously latent. The adequate critical response was not to defend the old boundary ("this is not really sculpture") but to map the new positions and develop evaluative criteria appropriate to them. AI is producing categorical dissolution across authorship, originality, creativity, and every framework built on the assumption that these categories describe stable, intrinsic properties rather than institutional constructions. The dissolution is irreversible—not because the categories