Hal Foster | |
|---|---|
 Foster in 2004 | |
| Born | (1955-08-13)August 13, 1955 (age 70) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1998) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (A.B.) Columbia University (M.A.) City University of New York (Ph.D.) |
| Doctoral advisor | Rosalind Krauss |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Art history |
| Institutions | Princeton University Cornell University |
Harold Foss "Hal"Foster[1] (born August 13, 1955) is an Americanart critic andhistorian. He was educated atPrinceton University,Columbia University, and theCity University of New York. He taught atCornell University from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. In 1998 he received aGuggenheim Fellowship.
Foster's criticism focuses on the role of theavant-garde withinpostmodernism. In 1983, he editedThe Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a groundbreaking text in postmodernism. InRecodings (1985), he promoted a vision of postmodernism that simultaneously engaged its avant-garde history and commented on contemporary society. InThe 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.
Foster was born Aug. 13, 1955, inSeattle, Washington.[2] His father was apartner in thelaw firm of Foster, Pepper & Shefelman.[3] He attendedLakeside School in Seattle, whereMicrosoft founderBill Gates was a classmate.[4]
He graduated with anA.B. in English from Princeton University in 1977 with a senior thesis exmaning the English poetsTed Hughes andGeoffrey Hill.[5] In 1979 he completed aMaster of Arts in English at Columbia University and aPhD in art history from the City University of New York in 1990, with adissertation onSurrealism supervised byRosalind Krauss.[2][6]
After graduating from Princeton, Foster moved to New York City, where he worked forArtforum from 1977 to 1981. He was then an editor atArt in America until 1987, when he became Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies at theWhitney Museum Independent Study Program.[2][6]
In 1982,[7] a friend from Lakeside School founded Bay Press to publishThe Mink's Cry, a children's book written by Foster.[3] In the following year Bay Press publishedThe Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a collection of essays onpostmodernism edited by Foster[8] that became a pivotal text of postmodernism.[6] In 1985, Bay Press publishedRecodings, Foster's first collection of essays.[6]The Anti-Aesthetic andRecodings were, respectively, Bay Press's best and second best selling titles.[3] Foster foundedZone in 1985 and was its editor until 1992.[9]
In 1991, Foster left the Whitney[2] to join the faculty of Cornell University's Department of the History of Art. That same year, Foster became an editor of the journalOctober;[6] he was still on the board as of 2023.[10] In 1997 he joined the faculty of his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton University, in the Department of Art and Archaeology.[6] In 2000 he became the Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton.[9] He chaired the Department of Art and Archaeology from 2005 to 2009.[11] In September 2011 he was appointed to the search committee to find a new dean for Princeton's School of Architecture.[12] He is a faculty fellow ofWilson College.[13]
Foster received aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1998.[14] In 2010 he was elected a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences[15] and awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing by theClark Art Institute.[9] Spring 2011 he won aBerlin Prize fellowship of theAmerican Academy in Berlin.[16] In 2013–14 he was appointed practitioner in residence atCamberwell College of Arts in London.
In his introduction toThe Anti-Aesthetic (1983), Foster described a distinction between complicity with and resistance tocapitalism within postmodernism.[8] The book included contributions byJean Baudrillard,Douglas Crimp,Kenneth Frampton,Jürgen Habermas,Fredric Jameson,Rosalind Krauss,Craig Owens,Edward Saïd, andGregory Ulmer.[17]
InRecodings[18] 1985, Foster focused on the role of theavant-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 themDara Birnbaum,Jenny Holzer,Barbara Kruger,Louise Lawler,Sherrie Levine,Allan McCollum,Martha Rosler, andKrzysztof 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.[6]
By the mid-1990s, Foster had come to believe that thedialectic 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. InThe Return of the Real (1996), taking as his modelKarl Marx's reaction againstG. W. F. Hegel, he sought to rebutPeter Bürger's assertion – which he made inTheory of the Avant-Garde[19] (1974) – that the neo-avant-garde largely represented a repetition of the projects and achievements of the historical avant-garde, and therefore it was a failure. Foster's model was based on a notion of "deferred action" inspired by the work ofSigmund Freud. He conceded the failure of the initial avant-garde wave (which included such figures asMarcel 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 withJean-François Lyotard's.[6]
Foster has been critical of the field ofvisual culture, accusing it of "looseness". In a 1999 article inSocial Text, Crimp rebutted Foster, criticizing his notion of the avant-garde and his treatment inThe Return of the Real of sexual identity inAndy Warhol's work.[6] Furthermore, this criticality spreads to both the practice and the field of design in his bookDesign and Crime (2002).[20]
Foster views his roles as art critic and art historian as complementary rather than mutually opposed, in accordance with his adherence to postmodernism.[6] In an interview published in theJournal 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".[21]
After four years... I am stepping down as chair....
