Hal Foster (art critic)

This article is about the art critic and Princeton professor. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a colFor the comic strip artist, see Hal Foster.
lection of essays on postmodernism edited by Foster[7]
that became a seminal text of postmodernism.[5] In 1985,
published Recodings, Fosters rst collection of
Harold Foss Hal Foster[1] (born August 13, 1955) is Bay Press
essays.[5] The Anti-Aesthetic and Recordings were, respecan American art critic and historian. He was educated at
[3]
Princeton University, Columbia University, and the City tively, Bay Presss best and second best selling titles.
Foster founded Zone in 1985 and was its editor until
University of New York. He taught at Cornell University
[8]
from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Prince- 1992.
ton since 1997. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fel- In 1991, Foster left the Whitney[2] to join the faculty of
lowship.
Cornell University's Department of the History of Art.
year, Foster became an editor of the journal
Fosters criticism focuses on the role of the avant-garde That same
[5]
October;
he was still on the board as of 2011.[9] In
within postmodernism. In 1983, he edited The AntiAesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a seminal text 1997 he joined the faculty of his undergraduate alma
University, in the Department of Art
in postmodernism. In Recodings (1985), he promoted mater, Princeton [5]
and
Archaeology.
In 2000 he became the Townsend
a vision of postmodernism that simultaneously engaged
Martin
Professor
of
Art
and Archaeology at Princeton.[8]
its avant-garde history and commented on contemporary
Department of Art and Archaeology from
society. In The Return of the Real (1996), he proposed He chaired the[10]
2005
to
2009.
In September 2011 he was appointed
a model of historical recurrence of the avant-garde in
to
the
search
committee
to nd a new dean for Princewhich each cycle would improve upon the inevitable fail[11]
tons
School
of
Architecture.
He is a faculty fellow of
ures of previous cycles. He views his roles as critic and
[12]
Wilson
College.
historian of art as complementary rather than mutually
Foster received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.[13] In
2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences[14] and awarded the Clark Prize
for Excellence in Arts Writing by the Clark Art Insti1 Early life and education
tute.[8] Spring 2011 he won a Berlin Prize fellowship of
the American Academy in Berlin.[15] In 2013-14 he was
Foster was born Aug. 13, 1955, in Seattle, Washington.[2]
appointed practitioner in residence at Camberwell ColHis father was a partner in the law rm of Foster Pepper
lege of Arts in London.
[3]
& Shefelman. He attended Lakeside School in Seattle,
[4]
where Microsoft founder Bill Gates was a classmate.

opposed.

He graduated from Princeton in 1977 with a Bachelor of

Arts in English and Art History.[1] He received a Master 3 Criticism
of Arts in English from Columbia University in 1979.[2]
He received his Ph.D. in art history from the City UniIn his introduction to The Anti-Aesthetic, Foster described
versity of New York in 1990, writing his dissertation on
a distinction between complicity with and resistance
Surrealism under Rosalind Krauss.[5]
to capitalism within postmodernism.[7] The book included contributions by Jean Baudrillard, Douglas Crimp,
Kenneth Frampton, Jrgen Habermas, Fredric Jame2 Career
son, Rosalind Krauss, Craig Owens, Edward Sad, and
Gregory Ulmer.[16]
After graduating from Princeton, Foster moved to New In Recodings (1985), Foster focused on the role of the
York City, where he worked for Artforum from 1977 to avant-garde within postmodernism. He advocated a post1981. He was then an editor at Art in America until 1987, modernism that engages in both a continuation of its hiswhen he became Director of Critical and Curatorial Stud- torical roots in the avant-garde and contemporary social
ies at the Whitney Museum.[2][5]
and political critique, in opposition to what he saw as a
In 1982,[6] a friend from Lakeside School founded Bay pluralistic impulse to abandon the avant-garde in faPress to publish The Minks Cry, a childrens book writ- vor of more aesthetically traditional and commercially
ten by Foster.[3] In the following year Bay Press published viable modes. He promoted artists he saw as exempli1

fying this vision, among them Dara Birnbaum, Jenny

Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine,
Allan McCollum, Martha Rosler, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Foster favored expansion of the scope of postmodernist art from galleries and museums to a broader
class of public locations and from painting and sculpture
to other media. He saw postmodernisms acknowledgment of dierences in viewers backgrounds and lack of
deference to expertise as important contributions to the
avant-garde.[5]
By the mid-1990s, Foster had come to believe that the
dialectic within the avant-garde between historical engagement and contemporary critique had broken down.
In his view, the latter came to be preferred over the former as interest was elevated over quality. In The Return
of the Real (1996), taking as his model Karl Marx's reaction against G. W. F. Hegel, he sought to rebut Peter
Brgers declaration of the failure of the avant-garde in
Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984). Fosters model was
based on a notion of deferred action inspired by the
work of Sigmund Freud. He conceded the failure of the
initial avant-garde wave (which included such gures as
Marcel Duchamp) but argued that future waves could redeem earlier ones by incorporating through historical reference those aspects that had not been comprehended the
rst time around. Gordon Hughes compares this theory
with Jean-Franois Lyotard's.[5]

REFERENCES

, ed. (1988). Vision and visuality. The New

Press.
, ed. (1988). Discussions in contemporary culture.
The New Press.
Compulsive Beauty, 1995. MIT Press.
The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End
of the Century, 1996. MIT Press.
Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes), 2002. 2nd.
ed, 2011. Verso Books.
Art Since 1900: Modernism, Anti-Modernism, Postmodernism, 2005. With Rosalind Krauss, YveAlain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh. Thames & Hudson.
Pop (Themes & Movements), 2006. With Mark
Francis. Phaidon Press.
Prosthetic Gods, 2006. MIT Press.
The Art-Architecture Complex, 2011. Verso Books.
The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the
Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and
Ruscha, 2011. Princeton University Press.

4.1.1 Reprints
Foster has been critical of the eld of visual culture, accusing it of looseness. In a 1999 article in Social Text,
Crimp rebutted Foster, criticizing his notion of the avant- 4.2 Book reviews
garde and his treatment in The Return of the Real of sexual identity in Andy Warhol's work.[5]
5 References
Foster views his roles as art critic and art historian as complementary rather than mutually opposed, in accordance
with his adherence to postmodernism.[5] In an interview
published in the Journal of Visual Culture, he said, I've
never seen critical work in opposition to historical work:
like many others I try to hold the two in tandem, in tension. History without critique is inert; criticism without
history is aimless.[17]

4.1

[1] Princeton University senior thesis catalog: Foster, Harold.

Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[2] Curriculum vitae: Hal Foster (PDF). Princeton University Department of Art and Archaeology. Retrieved 201111-04.
[3] Mudede, Charles (2002-01-30). The mysterious disappearance of Bay Press. The Stranger. Retrieved 201111-04.

Bibliography

[4] Miller, Brian (2002-07-31). Kmart vs.

Seattle Weekly. Retrieved 2011-11-04.

This list is incomplete; you can help by

expanding it.

[5] Hughes, Gordon (2002). Hal Foster (1955)". In Vickery, Jonathan; Costello, Diarmuid. Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers. Berg Publishers. pp. 7982. Retrieved
2011-11-04.

Books

Foster, Hal (1982). The minks cry. Bay Press.

, ed. (1983). The anti-aesthetic : essays on postmodern culture. Bay Press.
Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, 1985.
Bay Press.

Koolhaas.

[6] The Minks Cry. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-11-04.

[7] Harrison, Charles; Wood, Paul, eds. (2009). Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. WileyBlackwell. p. 1037. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[8] Clark Art Institute. The Clark Prize for Excellence in
Arts Writing. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[9] MIT Press Journals. October. Retrieved 2011-11-04.

[10] Foster, Hal (Spring 2009). Department of Art and Archaeology newsletter (PDF). p. 1. Retrieved 2011-1104. After four years... I am stepping down as chair....
[11] Altmann, Jennifer Greenstein (2011-09-28). Search
committee appointed for architecture dean. Retrieved
2011-11-04.
[12] Wilson College. Hal Foster. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[13] John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Hal
Foster. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[14] Worthen, Tory (2010-04-21). American Academy of
Arts and Sciences elects nine professors as fellows. The
Daily Princetonian. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
[15] Siemens Fellow - Class of Spring 2011. American
Academy in Berlin. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
[16] Foster, Hal, ed. (1983). The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on
Postmodern Culture. Bay Press.
[17] Foster, Hal (2004). Polemics, postmodernism, immersion, militarized space. Journal of Visual Culture 3 (3):
32035. Interviewed by Marquard Smith.

External links
Princeton Faculty: Hal Foster
The MIT Press: Hal Foster

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

Text

Hal Foster (art critic) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Foster_(art_critic)?oldid=682289151 Contributors: Jahsonic, Charles

Matthews, Orangemike, ZephyrAnycon, Mandarax, Rjwilmsi, Sherool, Grafen, White Lightning, Betacommand, Grhabyt, Smoghat,
John, Iopensa, Justus Nussbaum, Grahamdubya, Freshacconci, Johnpacklambert, SteveStrummer, Ethicoaestheticist, AlleborgoBot, Lagrange613, ImageRemovalBot, Addbot, Axl429, Otbon, Artmax, Pressint, Sunwin1960, Mattg82, Erik9bot, Gohughes, Gingerup, RjwilmsiBot, HiMyNameIsFrancesca, Dcstarling, ErinJovi, LauraFHilliger, Churn and change, Monkbot, Carlyohnein, KasparBot and Anonymous: 20

7.2

Images

File:Hal_Foster_2.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Hal_Foster_2.JPG License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Contributors: Own work Original artist: Grahamdubya

7.3

Content license

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