Hal Foster

Harold Foss "Hal" Foster (1955) is an American art critic and historian. He is Townsend Martin '17 Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton and co-editor of October.

Works

(in English unless noted)

Books

• The Mink's Cry, Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1982. A children's story; illustrated by Milo Mottola. [1]

• editor, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983, xvi+159 pp, PDF; repr., New York: New Press, 2002. Essays by Foster (preface), Habermas, Frampton, Krauss, Crimp, Owens, Ulmer, Jameson, Baudrillard, Said. Reviews list.
  • La posmodernidad, Barcelona: Kairós, 1985, 238 pp. (Spanish)
  • Han bigaku: posuto modan no shosō [反美学 : ポストモダンの諸相], Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1987, 308 pp. (Japanese)
  • Fan mei xue: hou xian dai wen hua lun ji [反美學 : 後現代文化論集], Xin dian shi: Li xu, 1998, 270 pp. (Chinese)

• Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1985. A collection of criticism published 1982-85 mostly in Art in America and October, 9 texts, revised.
  • Recodificação: arte, espetáculo, política cultural, São Paulo: Paulista, 1996, 295 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• editor, Discussions in Contemporary Culture, Number One, Seattle: Bay Press, and New York: Dia Art Foundation, 1987, 172 pp, OL. [2] Based on a series of 6 weekly discussions organised by Foster at Dia Art Foundation in NYC, 10 Feb-17 Mar 1987. Texts by Crow, Rosler, Owens, Crimp, Kruger, Wodiczko, Fried, Krauss, Buchloh, Graham, Rankin, Kolbowski, Clifford, Dominguez, Minh-ha, Jardine, Feher.

• editor, Vision and Visuality (Discussions in Contemporary Culture, 2), Seattle: Bay Press, and New York: Dia Art Foundation, 1988, 134 pp. [3] [4] Based on a day-long symposium held on 30 Apr 1988 at Dia's exhibition space in NYC. Texts by Jay, Crary, Krauss, Bryson, Rose.
  • Shikakuron [視覚論], trans. Kurenuma Norihisa, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2000, 215 pp. (Japanese)

• Compulsive Beauty, MIT Press, 1993, 344 pp. [5] A deconstructive reading of surrealism; based on author's dissertation. Reviews: Elkins (1994), Genova (1996), O'Brien (1997).
  • Belleza compulsiva, trans. Tamata Stuby, Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo, 2008, 335 pp. Excerpt. (Spanish) Review: Eseverri.
  • Zoraki güzellik, trans. Şebnem Kaptan, Istanbul: Ayrıntı, 2011, 255 pp. (Turkish)

• The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century, MIT Press, 1996, 321 pp. Chs. 1-2, Chs. 5-7, [6] Suggests that after the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites.
  • El retorno de lo real: la vanguardia a finales de siglo, trans. Alfredo Brotons Muñoz, Madrid: Akal, 2001. (Spanish)
  • Silchae ŭi kwihwan: 20-segi mal ui Abanggarŭdŭ, Pusan Kwangyŏksi: Kyŏsŏng Taehakkyo Ch'ulp'anbu, 2003, 362 pp. (Korean)
  • Le retour du réel: la situation actuelle de l'avant-garde, trans. Yves Cantaine, Frank Pierobon and Daniel Vander Gucht, Brussels: La lettre volée, 2005, 277 pp. (French)
  • Il ritorno del reale: l'avanguardia alla fine del Novecento, Milan: Postmedia, 2006, 255 pp. (Italian)
  • Gerçeğin geri dönüşü: yüzyılın sonunda avangard, trans. Esin Hoşsucu, Istanbul: Ayrıntı, 2009, 282 pp. (Turkish)
  • Powrót realnego: awangarda u schyłku XX wieku, trans. Mateusz Borowski and Małgorzata Sugiera, Kraków: Universitas, 2010, 281 pp. [7] (Polish)

• editor, with Gordon Hughes, Richard Serra, MIT Press, 2000, 205 pp. Essays by Buchloh, Michelson, Bois, Crimp, Krauss, Foster.

• Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes), Verso, 2002, 176 pp; Verso, 2010, 192 pp. [8] On "political economy of design: .. the marketing of culture and the branding of identity, the development of spectacle-architecture and the rise of global cities." Parts were first published in the London Review of Books. Reviews: Mudede (2002), Howard (2003), Atzmon (2006).
  • Design & crime, Milan: Postmedia, 2002, 141 pp. (Italian)
  • Diseño y delito y otras diatribas, trans. Alfredo Brotons Muñoz, Madrid: Akal, 2004, 176 pp. (Spanish)
  • Tasarım ve suç: müze - mimarlık - tasarım, trans. Elçin Gen, Istanbul: İletişim, 2004, 198 pp. (Turkish)
  • Dizajn i zločin (i druge polemike), trans. Goran Vujasinović, Zagreb: V.B.Z., 2006, 156 pp. (Croatian)
  • Design & crime, trans. Christophe Jacquet, Laure Manceau, Gauthier Herrmann, et al., Paris: Les Prairies ordinaires, 2008, 184 pp. (French)
  • Dezain to hanzai [デザインと犯罪], trans. Igarashi Kōji, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2011, 267 pp. (Japanese)
  • Design & Verbrechen und andere Schmähreden, trans. Thomas Atzert, Berlin: Tiamat 2012, 222 pp. (German)
  • Design a zločin, Prague: Fra, forthcoming. (Czech)

• with Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, London: Thames & Hudson, 2004, 704 pp, IA; 2nd ed., rev., 2012, 816 pp. [9] Reviews: Bishop (2005), Collings (2005), Gewen (2005), Bryson (2005), Karmel, Sá (2005 PT), Dahlberg (2006).
  • Arte desde 1900: modernidad, antimodernidad, posmodernidad, trans. Fabián Chueca, Francisco López and Alfredo Brotons Mun̋oz, Madrid: Akal, 2006, 704 pp. (Spanish)
  • Arte dal 1900 : modernismo, antimodernismo, postmodernismo, trans. Elio Grazioli, Bologna: Zanichelli, 2006, 704 pp. (Italian)
  • Umění po roce 1900: modernismus, antimodernismus, postmodernismus, trans. Josef Hrdlička, Irena Ellis and Jitka Sedláčková, Prague: Slovart, 2007, 704 pp. (Czech)

• Prosthetic Gods, MIT Press, 2004, 455 pp. Argues that two forms came to dominate modernist art above all others: the primitive and the machine. Reviews: Cohen (2005), Bowring (2005), Hopkins (2005), Cooper (2006).
  • Dioses prostéticos, trans. Alfredo Brotons Muñoz, Madrid: Akal, 2008, 383 pp. (Spanish)

• editor, with Mark Francis, Pop, London: Phaidon, 2005. [10]

• The Art-Architecture Complex, Verso, 2011, 316 pp, EPUB. [11] Argues that a fusion of architecture and art is a defining feature of contemporary culture; identifies a "global style" of architecture—as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano—analogous to the international style of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies. Reviews: Moore (2011), Long (2012), Cava (2012), Home (2013), Petts (2014).
  • El complejo arte-arquitectura, trans. José Adrián Vitier, Madrid: Turner, 2013, 346 pp. (Spanish)
  • Sanat mimarlık kompleksi: Küreselleşme çağında sanat, mimarlık ve tasarımın birliği, trans. Serpil Özaloğlu, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2013, 365 pp. (Turkish)
  • Āto kenchiku fukugōtai [アート建築複合態], trans. Takimoto Masashi, Tokyo: Kajimashuppankai, 2014, 374 pp. (Japanese)

• The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha, Princeton University Press, 2012, 352 pp. [12] [13] Suggests that the work of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter and Ruscha in the mid-to-late 1950s registers most suggestively a shift in the status of image and subjectivity. Reviews: Wagner (LRB 2012), Ionescu (2014).
  • Daiichi poppu jidai : hamiruton rikutensutain uōhōru rihitā rushē aruiwa poppu āto o meguru itsutsu no imēji [第一ポップ時代 : ハミルトン, リクテンスタイン, ウォーホール, リヒター, ルシェー, あるいはポップアートをめぐる五つのイメージ], trans. Nakano Tsutomu, Tokyo: Kawadeshobōshinsha, 2014. (Japanese)

• Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency, Verso, 2015, 208 pp. [14] Review: Steven (Affirmations 2015).

Essays

• "The Problem of Pluralism", Art in America, Jan 1982; rev. as "Against Pluralism", in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 13-32.
  • Contra el pluralismo, trans. Desiderio Navarro, Valencia: Episteme, 1998, 24 pp; repr. in La Gaceta de Cuba 5, La Habana, Sep-Oct 2000, pp 34-39. (Spanish)
• "Between Modernism and the Media", Art in America (Summer 1982); rev. in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 33-58.
• "Subversive Signs", Art in America (Nov 1982); rev. in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 99-118.
• "The Expressive Fallacy", Art in America (Jan 1983); rev. in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 59-78.
• "The Art of Spectacle", Art in America (Apr 1983); rev. as "Contemporary Art and Spectacle", in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 79-98.
• "For a Concept of the Political in Art", Art in America (Apr 1984); rev. as "For a Concept of the Political in Contemporary Art", in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 139-156.
• "(Post)Modern Polemics", New German Critique 33 (Fall 1984); repr. in Perspecta 21 (1984); rev. in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 121-138.
• "The 'Primitive' Unconscious of Modern Art, or White Skin Black Masks", October 34 (Fall 1985); rev. in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 181-210.
• "Readings in Cultural Resistance", in Foster, Recodings, 1985, pp 157-180.
• "The 'Primitive' Unconscious of Modern Art", October 34 (Autumn 1985), pp 45-70.
• "Armor Fou", October 56: High/Low: Art and Mass Culture (Spring 1991), pp 64-97.
• "Convulsive Identity", October 57 (Summer 1991), pp 18-54.
• "Postmodernism in Parallax", October 63 (Winter 1993), pp 3-20.
• "What's Neo about the Neo-Avant-Garde?", October 70 (1994), pp 5-32.
  • "Co je nového na neovantgardě?", trans. David Kulhánek, Sešit 8, Prague, 2010, pp 58-94. (Czech)
• "The Artist as Ethnographer?", in The Traffic in Culture, eds. George Marcus and Fred Myers, University of California Press, 1995, pp 302-309.
• "Death in America", October 75 (Winter 1996), pp 36-59.
• "The Archive without Museums", October 77 (Summer 1996), pp 97-119.
• "Obscene, Abject, Traumatic", October 78 (Autumn 1996), pp 106-124.
• "An Art of Missing Parts", October 92 (Spring 2000), pp 128-156.
• "The Great US Election Disaster: The 2000 US Presidential Election", London Review of Books 22:23, 30 Nov 2000, pp 36-37.
• "Blinded Insights: On the Modernist Reception of the Art of the Mentally Ill", October 97 (Summer 2001), pp 3-30.
• "The ABCs of Contemporary Design", October 100 (Spring 2002), pp 191-199.
  • "Voces en vanguardia. Pequeño diccionario de ideas del diseño actual", Arquitectura Viva 93, Nov-Dec 2003, pp 23-31. (Spanish)
  • "Un breve diccionario de las ideas actuales sobre diseño", trans. Invoca, Quintana 3 (2004), pp 57-70. (Spanish)
• "Archives of Modern Art", October 99 (Winter 2002), pp 81-95.
• "On the First Pop Age", New Left Review 19, Jan-Feb 2003.
  • "Acerca de la primera era del pop art", New Left Review ES 19, Jan-Feb 2003, pp 68-87.
• "In New York: plans for Ground Zero", London Review of Books 25:6, 20 Mar 2003, pp 16-17. [15]
• "Dada Mime", October 105: Dada (Summer 2003), pp 166-176.
• "An Archival Impulse", October 110 (Fall 2004), pp 3-22.
• "Vision Quest: The Cinema of Harun Farocki", Artforum (Nov 2004), pp 156-161 & 250.
• "Yellow Ribbons: kitsch in Bush’s America", London Review of Books 27:13, 7 Jul 2005, pp 29-31. [16]
• "It’s Modern but is it contemporary?: The Trouble with MoMA", London Review of Books 26:24, 16 Dec 2004, pp 23-25.
• "The Medium is the Market: Business Art", London Review of Books 30:19, 9 Oct 2008, pp 23-24. [17]
• editor, "Questionnaire on the Contemporary", October 130 (Fall 2009), pp 3-124.
  • "Contemporary Extracts", e-flux 12 (1/2010).
• "Towards a Grammar of Emergency", New Left Review 68, Mar-Apr 2011, pp 105-118. [18]
  • "Hacia una gramatica de la emergencia", New Left Review ES 68, Mar-Apr 2011, pp 93-104. (Spanish)
• "The Last Column: Remnants of 9/11", London Review of Books 33:17, 8 Sep 2011, p 17. On the 9/11 Museum.
• "On Richard Hamilton", London Review of Books 33:19, 6 Oct 2011, p 37. [19]
• "Post-Critical", The Brooklyn Rail, 10 Dec 2012. On Rancière and Latour.
• "After the White Cube", London Review of Books 37:6, 19 Mar 2015, pp 25-26. Asks what art museums are for.

More

• Essays in October
• Articles in Artforum
• Articles in London Review of Books
• Articles in New Left Review, (in spanish)

Conversations, interviews

• with Rosalind Krauss, Silvia Kolbowski, Miwon Kwon, and Benjamin Buchloh, "The Politics of the Signifier: A Conversation on the Whitney Biennial", October 66 (Autumn 1993), pp 3-27
• with Renée Green, Mitchell Kane, Miwon Kwon, John Lindell, and Helen Molesworth, "On Site Specificity: A Discussion", Documents 4-5, New York, 1994.
• with Benjamin Buchloh, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Denis Hollier, and Helen Molesworth, "The Politics of the Signifier II: A Conversation on the 'Informe' and the Abject", October 67 (Winter 1994), pp 3-21.
• with Rosalind Krauss, Denis Hollier, Annette Michelson, Silvia Kolbowski, Martha Buskirk, and Benjamin Buchloh, "The Reception of the Sixties", October 69 (Summer 1994), pp 3-21.
• with Silvia Kolbowski, Mignon Nixon, Mary Kelly, Liz Kotz, Simon Leung, and Ayisha Abraham, "A Conversation on Recent Feminist Art Practices", October 71: feminist issueS (Winter 1995), pp 49-69.
• with Tim Dean and Kaja Silverman, "A Conversation with Leo Bersani", October 82 (Autumn 1997), pp 3-16.
• with Denis Hollier, Silvia Kolbowski, and Rosalind Krauss, "The MOMA Expansion: A Conversation with Terence Riley", October 84 (Spring 1998), pp 3-30.
• with George Baker, Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin Buchloh, Andrea Fraser, David Joselit, James Meyer, Robert Storr, John Miller, and Helen Molesworth, "Round Table: The Present Conditions of Art Criticism", October 100: Obsolescence (Spring 2002), pp 200-228.
• with Malcolm Turvey, Chrissie Iles, George Baker, Matthew Buckingham, Anthony McCall, "Round Table: The Projected Image in Contemporary Art", October 104 (Spring 2003), pp 71-96.
• with Stan Allen, "A Conversation with Kenneth Frampton", October 106 (Autumn 2003), pp 35-58.

Reviews

Exhibition reviews

in Artforum (selection)

• "Preservation Society", Jan 2011. On Chaos and Classicism at Guggenheim.
• "September 2011. MoMA PS1, New York", Jan 2012.
• "Picasso: Sculpture. Museum of Modern Art, New York", Dec 2015.

in London Review of Books

• "At Dia:Beacon", 5 Jun 2003.
• "At the Guggenheim: Pop Surrealism", 18 Dec 2003.
• "At the Whitney: Ed Ruscha’s Hollywood Sublime", 2 Sep 2004.
• "In Central Park: The Gates", 3 Mar 2005.
• "In Venice: at the Biennale", 4 Aug 2005.
• "At the Guggenheim: Russian Art", 3 Nov 2005.
• "At the Guggenheim: David Smith", 9 Mar 2006.
• "At the Hayward: ‘The Painting of Modern Life’", 1 Nov 2007.
• "At the Grand Palais: Richard Serra", 22 May 2008.
• "At Inverleith House: Richard Hamilton", 14 Aug 2008. [20]
• "At the Hayward: Ed Ruscha", 19 Nov 2009.
• "At MoMA: Diego Rivera", 26 Jan 2012.
• "At MoMA: Cindy Sherman", 10 May 2012.
• "At MoMA: ‘Inventing Abstraction’", 7 Feb 2013.
• "At the Guggenheim", 20 Mar 2014.
• "At MoMA: Sigmar Polke", 19 Jun 2014.
• "At the Whitney: Jeff Koons", 31 Jul 2014.

Book reviews

• "Art Agonistes", New Left Review 8, Mar-Apr 2001, pp 140-149. Review of Newman's Challenging Art: Artforum. [21]

in London Review of Books

• "Slumming with Rappers at the Roxy", 21 Sep 2000. Review of Seabrook's Nobrow.
• "Hey, that’s me: Bruce Mau", 5 Apr 2001. Review of Mau's Life Style. [22]
• "Why all the hoopla?: Frank Gehry", 23 Aug 2001. Review of Cohen's Frank Gehry.
• "Bigness: Rem Koolhaas", 29 Nov 2001. Review of Koolhaas's Harvard Design School Guide and Great Leap Forward.
• "Andy Paperbag: Andy Warhol", 21 Mar 2002. Review of Koestenbaum's Andy Warhol. [23]
• "Expendabilia: Reyner Banham", 9 May 2002. Review of Whiteley's Reyner Banham. [24]
• "Pop Eye: Handmade Readymades", 22 Aug 2002. Review of Lobel's Image Duplicator. [25]
• "Nutty Professors: ‘Lingua Franca’", 8 May 2003. Review of Star's Quick Studies. [26]
• "Long Live Aporia!: William Gaddis", 24 Jul 2003. Review of Gaddis' Agapē Agape and The Rush for Second Place. [27]
• "Arty Party: from the ‘society of spectacle’ to the ‘society of extras’", 4 Dec 2003. Review of Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and Postproduction and Obrist's Interviews I. [28]
• "Go, Modernity: Norman Foster", 22 Jun 2006. Review of two books of Foster. [29]
• "Wine Flasks in Bordeaux, Sail Spires in Cardiff: Richard Rogers", 19 Oct 2006. Review of Powell's books on Rogers. [30]
• "Global Style: Renzo Piano", 20 Sep 2007. Review of Jodidio's and Buchanan's books on Piano.
• "Crack Open the Shells: The Situationist Moment", 12 Mar 2009. Review of Debord's Correspondence.
• "I am the decider: Agamben, Derrida and Santner", 17 Mar 2011. Review of Derrida's The Beast and the Sovereign. [31]
• "Preposterous Timing", 8 Nov 2012. Review of Nagel's Medieval Modern and Powell's Depositions. [32]
• "What's the Problem with Critical Art?", 10 Oct 2013. Review of Rancière's Aisthesis.
• "Exhibitionists", 4 Jun 2015. Review of Obrist's Ways of Curating and Balzer's Curationism.

Interviews

• Marquard Smith, "Polemics, Postmodernism, Immersion, Militarized Space", Journal of Visual Culture 3 (2004), pp 320-335.
• John Douglas Millar, "After the Canon? An Interview with Hal Foster", Mute, 23 Nov 2015.

Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Foster_(art_critic)