Hal Foster
· Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of Art and ArchaeologyPrinceton University · Art and Archaeology
Active 1897–2025
About
Hal Foster is a professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, where he teaches and publishes in the areas of modernist and contemporary art, architecture, and theory. He is a member of the School of Architecture and an associate member of the Department of German, as well as sitting on the executive committee of the Program in Media & Modernity. Foster is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been recognized with awards such as the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism and the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. He has delivered the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery and has held fellowships at the American Academy in Berlin and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. His teaching includes undergraduate courses in 20th-century art and graduate seminars on prewar and postwar topics, with a particular interest in the relation between art and philosophy during times of political crisis. Foster's current research focuses on a book about 'banal aesthetics,' exploring how 20th-century artists and writers are drawn to the commonplace, the everyday, the trivial, the vulgar, and the vernacular. His extensive publication record includes books and essays on modernist and contemporary art, criticism, and theory.
Research topics
- Art
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Computer Science
- Humanities
- Anthropology
- Law
- History
- Art history
- Literature
Selected publications
2025-03-28
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding2025-03-19
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding2025-12-12
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingWe habitually see modernity as a breaking free from the past, but what if that past has persisted, embedded in Modernism too? We habitually see capitalism as a dynamic force, the greatest the world has ever known, but what if, in terms of inequality, it has proved to be relatively static, a fierce guardian of the financial status quo? Might modernist studies serve as an ideological cover for both modernity and capitalism to the extent that we continue to characterize Modernism as creative disruption? Who or what, finally, has our modernist rhetoric of defamiliarization, destabilization, risk, and crisis served?
Tacita Dean in Conversation with Hal Foster (2017)
The MIT Press eBooks · 2025-05-20
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding2025-03-17
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingHow to understand the strange becoming-animal of human figures in the art of Cobra, the Northern European artists movement? In a 1948 manifesto, the Dutch artist Constant frames the postwar situation, in dialectical terms, as a “total collapse” that might permit a “new freedom,” as long as artists “find their way back to the first point of origin of creative activity.” To this end Constant delivers a striking formula: “A painting is not a construction of colors and lines, but an animal, a night, a scream, a human being, or all of these.” This intimates that the creaturely is a cipher of the confused aftermath of the war—of a “broken down” condition in which “limitations … are dissolved.” It is the Danish Asger Jorn who, above all others, rises to this challenge, writing, “We must portray ourselves as human beasts.”
October · 2024-01-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Foster examines the historical tension between utopian and anarchist approaches to social transformation, beginning with Anthony Vidler's 1975 question about how to “refuse the present” while acting within it. Through analysis of competing theoretical frameworks—particularly Manfredo Tafuri's critique of the avant-garde and the dialectic between “Chance” and “Form”—Foster reconsiders the relationship between anarchist and socialist approaches to radical change. He reframes Tafuri's dialectic as an antinomy between Psychopathology and Utopia, exemplified by the contrasting legacies of Dada and Constructivism. While acknowledging the historical failures of utopian projects, Foster argues for a contemporary synthesis of anarchist and socialist elements to address climate crisis. He suggests that environmental collapse demands both the mutual aid practices of anarchism and the strong state intervention of socialism. Drawing on thinkers from Rosa Luxemburg to Andreas Malm and contemporary examples from Occupy to COVID-19 responses, Foster advocates for what he terms “socialist Constructivism” to implement necessary environmental measures. The article concludes by proposing that climate refugees be seen as vanguards of new social forms and endorsing Fredric Jameson's reformulation of Gramsci's famous motto as “cynicism of the intellect, utopianism of the will.”
The ABCs of Contemporary Design [2001]
Routledge eBooks · 2023 · 3 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Computer Science
- Computer Science
Hal Foster is an important critical voice within the field of modern and contemporary art. Combining a nuanced attentiveness to the art-object, with a sophisticated use of contemporary theory (psychoanalysis, for instance), Foster has rescued many artworks from the deadening grip of those who want their art history simply to supplement the intrinsic quality of art. Later (along with some of his colleagues from the journal October) he worked to resuscitate the potential of artistic avant-gardism (or neo-avant-gardism, as postwar avant-gardism has been dubbed) as a critical heritage that contemporary art could draw on. Clearly architecture has a new centrality in cultural discourse. Although this centrality stems from the initial debates about postmodernism in the 1970s, which were focused on architecture, it is clinched by the contemporary inflation of design and display in all sorts of spheres – art, fashion, business, and so on.
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2023-10-17
book1st authorCorrespondingRocznik Ruskiej Bursy · 2023-12-15
articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding“The Object Comes Alive”: A Conversation with Claes Oldenburg
October · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract In this interview, the late Claes Oldenburg looks back on both the motivations and the modalities of his distinctive practice. Among the topics discussed are his signature “guises,” such as the Ray Guns and the Flags, the performative basis of his early objects, and his sustained commitment to an aesthetic of shape-shifting.
Frequent coauthors
- 8 shared
Rosalind Krauss
- 6 shared
Yve-Alain Bois
- 6 shared
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
- 5 shared
David Joselit
- 3 shared
Donald B. Kuspit
- 3 shared
Richard Serra
Petrobras (Brazil)
- 3 shared
Lucy R. Lippard
Georg Kolbe Museum
- 2 shared
Janet Kardon
Awards & honors
- Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism in College Art A…
- Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing (2010)
- Siemens Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin
- Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in…
- A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Galler…
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