Hal Foster (art critic)
Encyclopedia
Harold Foss "Hal" Foster (born August 13, 1955) is an American
art critic
and historian. He was educated at Princeton University
, Columbia University
, and the City University of New York
. He taught at Cornell University
from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship
.
Foster's criticism focuses on the role of the avant-garde
within postmodernism
. In 1983 he edited The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a seminal text in postmodernism
. In Recodings (1985), he promoted a vision of postmodernism that simultaneously engaged its avant-garde history and commented on contemporary society. In The Return of the Real (1996), he proposed a model of historical recurrence of the avant-garde in which each cycle would improve upon the inevitable failures of previous cycles. He views his roles as critic and historian of art as complementary rather than mutually opposed.
in the law firm
of Foster Pepper & Shefelman. He attended Lakeside School
in Seattle, where Microsoft
founder Bill Gates
was a classmate.
He graduated from Princeton in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts
in English. He received a Master of Arts
in English from Columbia University
in 1979. He received his Ph.D.
in art history from the City University of New York
in 1990, writing his dissertation on Surrealism
under Rosalind Krauss.
, where he worked for Artforum
from 1977 to 1981. He was then an editor at Art in America
until 1987, when he became Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Museum.
In 1982, a friend from Lakeside School founded Bay Press to publish The Mink's Cry, a children's book written by Foster. In the following year Bay Press published The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a collection of essays on postmodernism
edited by Foster that became a seminal text of postmodernism. In 1985, Bay Press published Recodings, Foster's first collection of essays. The Anti-Aesthetic and Recordings were, respectively, Bay Press's best and second best selling titles. Foster founded Zone in 1985 and was its editor until 1992.
In 1991, Foster left the Whitney to join the faculty of Cornell University
's Department of the History of Art. That same year, Foster became an editor of the journal
October
; he was still on the board as of 2011. In 1997 he joined the faculty of his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton University, in the Department of Art and Archaeology. In 2000 he became the Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton. He chaired the Department of Art and Archaeology from 2005 to 2009. In September 2011 he was appointed to the search committee to find a new dean for Princeton's School of Architecture. He is a faculty fellow of Wilson College
.
Foster received a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1998. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing by the Clark Art Institute
.
within postmodernism. The book included contributions by Jean Baudrillard
, Douglas Crimp
, Kenneth Frampton
, Jürgen Habermas
, Fredric Jameson
, Krauss, Craig Owens, Edward Saïd
, and Gregory Ulmer
.
In Recodings (1985), Foster focused on the role of the avant-garde
within postmodernism. He advocated a postmodernism that engages in both a continuation of its historical roots in the avant-garde and contemporary social and political critique, in opposition to what he saw as a "pluralistic" impulse to abandon the avant-garde in favor of more aesthetically traditional and commercially viable modes. He promoted artists he saw as exemplifying 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 postmodernism's acknowledgment of differences in viewers' backgrounds and lack of deference to expertise as important contributions to the avant-garde.
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 Bürger's declaration of the failure of the avant-garde in Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984). Foster's 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 figures 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 first time around. Gordon Hughes compares this theory with Jean-François Lyotard
's.
Foster has been critical of the field of visual culture
, accusing it of "looseness". In 1999 article in Social Text
, Crimp rebutted Foster, criticizing his notion of the avant-garde and his treatment in The Return of the Real of sexual identity in Andy Warhol
's work.
Foster views his roles as art critic and art historian as complementary rather than mutually opposed, in accordance with his adherence to postmodernism. 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".
Books edited
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
and historian. He was educated at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
. He taught at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
.
Foster's criticism focuses on the role of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
within postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. In 1983 he edited The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a seminal text in postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. In Recodings (1985), he promoted a vision of postmodernism that simultaneously engaged its avant-garde history and commented on contemporary society. In The Return of the Real (1996), he proposed a model of historical recurrence of the avant-garde in which each cycle would improve upon the inevitable failures of previous cycles. He views his roles as critic and historian of art as complementary rather than mutually opposed.
Early life and education
Foster was born Aug. 13, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. His father was a partnerPartner (business rank)
A partner in a law firm, accounting firm, consulting firm, or financial firm is a highly ranked position. Originally, these businesses were set up as legal partnerships in which the partners were entitled to a share of the profits of the enterprise. The name has remained even though many of these...
in the law firm
Law firm
A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...
of Foster Pepper & Shefelman. He attended Lakeside School
Lakeside School
Lakeside School is a private/independent school located in the Haller Lake neighborhood at the north city limits of Seattle, Washington, USA, for grades 5–12....
in Seattle, where Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
founder Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
was a classmate.
He graduated from Princeton in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English. He received a Master of Arts
Master of Arts
A Master of Arts is a high academic degree offered at many universities in Europe and the United States.A Master of Arts, Magister Artium, or Magister in Artibus may also refer to:...
in English from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1979. He received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in art history from the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
in 1990, writing his dissertation on Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
under Rosalind Krauss.
Career
After graduating from Princeton, Foster moved to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he worked for Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
from 1977 to 1981. He was then an editor at Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
until 1987, when he became Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Museum.
In 1982, a friend from Lakeside School founded Bay Press to publish The Mink's Cry, a children's book written by Foster. In the following year Bay Press published The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a collection of essays on postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
edited by Foster that became a seminal text of postmodernism. In 1985, Bay Press published Recodings, Foster's first collection of essays. The Anti-Aesthetic and Recordings were, respectively, Bay Press's best and second best selling titles. Foster founded Zone in 1985 and was its editor until 1992.
In 1991, Foster left the Whitney to join the faculty of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
's Department of the History of Art. That same year, Foster became an editor of the journal
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
October
October (journal)
October is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in contemporary art, criticism, and theory, published by the MIT Press.-History:...
; he was still on the board as of 2011. In 1997 he joined the faculty of his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton University, in the Department of Art and Archaeology. In 2000 he became the Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton. He chaired the Department of Art and Archaeology from 2005 to 2009. In September 2011 he was appointed to the search committee to find a new dean for Princeton's School of Architecture. He is a faculty fellow of Wilson College
Wilson College, Princeton University
Woodrow Wilson College, the first of Princeton University's six residential colleges, was developed in the late 1950s when a group of students formed the Woodrow Wilson Lodge as an alternative to the eating clubs. The Woodrow Wilson Lodge members originally met and dined in Madison Hall, which is...
.
Foster received a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 1998. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
and awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing by the Clark Art Institute
Clark Art Institute
The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, usually referred to simply as "The Clark", is an art museum with a large and varied collection located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States...
.
Criticism
In his introduction to The Anti-Aesthetic, Foster described a distinction between complicity with and resistance to capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
within postmodernism. The book included contributions by Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
, Douglas Crimp
Douglas Crimp
Douglas Crimp is an American professor in art history based at the University of Rochester.- Biography :Born in Idaho, Crimp went to Tulane University in New Orleans on a scholarship to study art history. His career started after moving to New York in 1967, where he worked as an art critic,...
, Kenneth Frampton
Kenneth Frampton
Kenneth Frampton , is a British architect, critic, historian and the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York....
, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
, Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, Krauss, Craig Owens, Edward Saïd
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, and Gregory Ulmer
Gregory Ulmer
Gregory Leland Ulmer is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida and a professor of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.- Career :...
.
In Recodings (1985), Foster focused on the role of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
within postmodernism. He advocated a postmodernism that engages in both a continuation of its historical roots in the avant-garde and contemporary social and political critique, in opposition to what he saw as a "pluralistic" impulse to abandon the avant-garde in favor of more aesthetically traditional and commercially viable modes. He promoted artists he saw as exemplifying this vision, among them Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum, born in 1946 in New York ,USA, where she continues to live and work, uses video to reconstruct television imagery using as material such archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes. Her techniques involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with...
, Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.-Education:...
, Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...
, Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler
Louise Lawler is a U.S. artist and photographer. From the late 1970s onwards, Lawler's work has focused on the presentation and marketing of artwork. Much of this work consists of photographs of other peoples' artwork and the context in which it is viewed...
, Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine
Sherrie Levine is an American photographer and appropriation artist.-Education:Levine received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969. In 1973, she earned an M.F.A. from the same institution....
, Allan McCollum
Allan McCollum
Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944, and now lives and works in New York City. He has spent over forty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world constituted in mass production, focusing most recently on...
, Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives. She graduated from Brooklyn College and the University of California, San Diego . Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture...
, and Krzysztof Wodiczko
Krzysztof Wodiczko
Krzysztof Wodiczko, born April 16th 1943, is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments...
. 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 postmodernism's acknowledgment of differences in viewers' backgrounds and lack of deference to expertise as important contributions to the avant-garde.
By the mid-1990s, Foster had come to believe that the dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
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
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's reaction against G. W. F. Hegel, he sought to rebut Peter Bürger's declaration of the failure of the avant-garde in Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984). Foster's model was based on a notion of "deferred action" inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. He conceded the failure of the initial avant-garde wave (which included such figures as Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
) but argued that future waves could redeem earlier ones by incorporating through historical reference those aspects that had not been comprehended the first time around. Gordon Hughes compares this theory with Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
's.
Foster has been critical of the field of visual culture
Visual culture
Visual Culture as an academic subject is a field of study that generally includes some combination of cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology, by focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images.- Overview :...
, accusing it of "looseness". In 1999 article in Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
, Crimp rebutted Foster, criticizing his notion of the avant-garde and his treatment in The Return of the Real of sexual identity in Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's work.
Foster views his roles as art critic and art historian as complementary rather than mutually opposed, in accordance with his adherence to postmodernism. 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".
Publications
Books authored- The Mink's Cry, 1982. Bay Press.
- Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, 1985. Bay Press.
- Compulsive Beauty, 1995. MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
. - 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 BooksVerso BooksVerso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
. - Art Since 1900: Modernism, Anti-Modernism, Postmodernism, 2005. With Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain BoisYve-Alain BoisYve-Alain Bois is an historian and critic of modern art. Yve-Alain Bois was born on April 16, 1952 in Constantine, Algeria.-Education:...
, and Benjamin Buchloh. Thames & HudsonThames & HudsonThames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture. With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong...
. - Pop (Themes & Movements), 2006. With Mark Francis. Phaidon PressPhaidon PressPhaidon Press is a British publisher of books on the visual arts, including art, architecture, photography, and design worldwide.As of 2009, Phaidon's headquarters are in London, UK, though they were in Oxford for many years, with offices in New York City, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Tokyo...
. - 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 PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
.
Books edited
- The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 1983. Bay Press. Published in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
by Pluto PressPluto PressPluto Press is a radical, progressive, independent publisher based in London. Pluto Press specialises in "progressive, critical perspectives in politics and the social sciences", and describes itself as "one of the world’s leading radical publishers". It has published authors such as Noam Chomsky,...
as Postmodern Culture (1985). - Vision and Visuality, 1985. The New PressThe New PressThe New Press is a not-for-profit, United States-based publishing house that operates in the public interest. It was established in 1990 as an alternative to large commercial publishers, and is supported financially by various foundations, groups and corporations including the Ford Foundation, the...
. - Discussions in Contemporary Culture, 1988. The New Press.