The Anti-Aesthetic and Recordings were, respectively, Bay Press's best and second best selling titles. In 1985, Bay Press published Recodings, Foster's first collection of essays. 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 pivotal text of postmodernism.

In 1982, a friend from Lakeside School founded Bay Press to publish The Mink's Cry, a children's book written by Foster. He was then an editor at Art in America until 1987, when he became Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Museum. Career Īfter graduating from Princeton, Foster moved to New York City, where he worked for Artforum from 1977 to 1981. in art history from the City University of New York in 1990, writing his dissertation on Surrealism under Rosalind Krauss. in English from Princeton University in 1977 after completing a 106-page long senior thesis titled ' Ted Hughes and Geoffrey Hill: Two Poets in a Tradition.' He received a Master of Arts in English from Columbia University in 1979. He attended Lakeside School in Seattle, where Microsoft founder Bill Gates was a classmate.

His father was a partner in the law firm of Foster, Pepper & Shefelman. He views his roles as critic and historian of art as complementary rather than mutually opposed.įoster was born Aug. 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. In Recodings (1985), he promoted a vision of postmodernism that simultaneously engaged its avant-garde history and commented on contemporary society.

In 1983, he edited The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, a groundbreaking text in postmodernism. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.įoster's criticism focuses on the role of the avant-garde within postmodernism.

He taught at Cornell University from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. He was educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the City University of New York. Harold Foss 'Hal' Foster (born August 13, 1955) is an American art critic and historian.

What Comes After Farce by Hal Foster