Bad New Days
Art, Criticism, Emergency
Will be published approx. on 2. May 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-1-78478-148-4 (ISBN)
Description
Bad New Days examines the evolution of art and criticism in Western Europe and North America over the last twenty-five years, exploring their dynamic relation to the general condition of emergency instilled by neoliberalism and the war on terror.
Considering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like Jacques Ranciere, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, Hal Foster shows the ways in which art has anticipated this condition, at times resisting the collapse of the social contract or gesturing toward its repair; at other times burlesquing it.
Against the claim that art making has become so heterogeneous as to defy historical analysis, Foster argues that the critic must still articulate a clear account of the contemporary in all its complexity. To that end, he offers several paradigms for the art of recent years, which he terms "abject," "archival," "mimetic," and "precarious."
Considering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like Jacques Ranciere, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, Hal Foster shows the ways in which art has anticipated this condition, at times resisting the collapse of the social contract or gesturing toward its repair; at other times burlesquing it.
Against the claim that art making has become so heterogeneous as to defy historical analysis, Foster argues that the critic must still articulate a clear account of the contemporary in all its complexity. To that end, he offers several paradigms for the art of recent years, which he terms "abject," "archival," "mimetic," and "precarious."
Reviews / Votes
Deft, opinionated, Foster is one of those rare art theorists whose measured prose can engage a wider readership, cutting through the philosophical inflationism that afflicts much of the higher gossip among art critics. * Guardian * Foster's latest book, Bad New Days, attempts to recover the idea of an avant-garde after a hard half-century of infighting, obfuscation, rivalry, and successive failures to engage with the real world of politics. * Harper's * Foster's strength lies in his erudite attention to those artists that have emerged as definitive of their particular moment. -- Mostafa Heddaya * Artinfo *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 208 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
372 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78478-148-4 (9781784781484)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2015
Verso Books
€16.49
Available for download
Previous edition
Book
09/2015
Verso Books
€25.50
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of October magazine and books, he is the editor of The Anti-Aesthetic, and the author of Design and Crime, Recodings, The Return of the Real, Compulsive Beauty and The Art-Architecture Complex.