
Fail Better
Reckonings with Artists and Critics
$96.18
- Paperback
400 pages
- Release Date
25 February 2025
Summary
From the distinguished art critic and historian, vital essays on key artists and critics, revealing how they redefined art and criticism over the last six decades.
“Serious art anticipates the future as much as it reflects the present,” Hal Foster remarked. “By the same token serious art history is driven by the present as much as it is informed by the past.” In Fail Better, Foster, an art critic and historian whose influential work spans disciplines and decades, brings this …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262552356 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262552353 |
| Author: | Hal Foster |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 400 |
| Release Date: | 25 February 2025 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 241mm x 171mm |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
Included in the Brooklyn Rail’s Best Art Books of 2025
“Foster writes from the perspective of critical theory, exploring language in favor of its textual innovations and experiments, treating words as pliant and autonomous as the materials used by artists in the twentieth century, such as paint, photography, film, plexiglass, metal, textile, rubber, found objects, etc…In service of clarity in these seas of complex ideas, Foster’s writing and prose style has remained consistently probing, with provocative inquisitiveness for him and his reader alike. His maximal reaching for near perfection in translation of criticism and history has always been based on how great art is a result of the artist’s real struggle.” —The Brooklyn Rail
About The Author
Hal Foster
Hal Foster is the Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. He is the author of What Comes After Farce? and Brutal Aesthetics, among other books. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he coedits October, and writes regularly for The London Review of Books.
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