Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics - Softcover

Foster, Hal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565844645 ISBN 13: 9781565844643

Publisher: The New Press, 1998

Synopsis

For the past few decades Hal Foster’s critical gaze has encompassed the increasingly complex machinery of the culture industry. His observations push the boundaries of cultural criticism to establish a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. Recodings has become the classic “primer in poststructuralist debate” (Village Voice). The essays present a constellation of concerns about the limits and myths of postmodernism, the uses and abuses of historicism, the connections of recent art and architecture with media spectacle and institutional power, and the transformations of the avant garde and of cultural politics generally.

About this title

About the Author:

Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, where he teaches courses in modernist and contemporary art and theory and directs the graduate proseminar in methodology. He is a faculty member of the School of Architecture and an associate faculty member of the Department of German; he also works with Media and Modernity and European Cultural Studies programs. He is the author of numerous books, including The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture and Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, both published by The New Press. He is also the editor of two New Press books, Discussions in Contemporary Culture #1 and Vision and Visuality: Discussions in Contemporary Culture #2. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foster writes regularly for October, which he co-edits; Artforum; the London Review of Books; and New Left Review.

Review:

A valuable contribution to current art criticism. -- New Art Examiner

[A] lucid and provocative work, and one that allows us to glimpse the stirrings and upheavals in the hothouse of modern art. -- Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch

[A] primer in poststructuralist discourse and debate with its sights on bringing about the end of Western civilization in theory. Taking aim, Foster blasts away at those involved in rationalizing capitalism through the culture industry. For people who look toward critical theory as a way to outthink the powers that be rather than to disguise fuzzy thinking behind hermetic verbiage, Foster makes a lot of sense. -- Village Voice, Greg Tate

[A] valuable contribution to current art criticism. -- New Art Examiner, Eleanor Heartney

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1565844645
• ISBN 13: 9781565844643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 243