A "Village Voice" Best Book of the Year that examines contemporary cultural politics.

With contributions by: Benjamin H.D. Buchloh James Clifford Douglas Crimp Thomas Crow Virginia Dominguez Michael Feher Michael Fried Dan Graham Alice Jardine Silvia Kolbowski Rosalind Krauss Barbara Kruger Trinh T. Minh-Ha Craig Owens Aimee Rankin Martha Rosler Krzysztof Wodiczko

Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series co-published with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership.

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.

Kerry James Marshall is one of America's greatest living painters. History of Painting presents a groundbreaking body of new work that engages with the history of the medium itself. In Kerry James Marshall: History of Painting, the artist has widened his scope to include both figurative and nonfigurative works that deal explicitly with art history, race, and gender, as well as paintings that force us to reexamine how artworks are received in the world and in the art market. In all the paintings in this book, Marshall's critique of history and of dominant white narratives is present, even as the subjects of the paintings move between reproductions of auction catalogues, abstract works, and scenes of everyday life. Essays by Hal Foster and Teju Cole help readers navigate Marshall's masterful vision, decoding complexly layered works such as Untitled (Underpainting), 2018, and Marshall's own artistic philosophy. This catalogue is published on the occasion of Marshall's eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner, London in 2018.

This career-spanning publication features conceptual, political, formal, and technical perspectives on the work of contemporary sculptor Charles Ray For Charles Ray (born 1953), sculpture is a way of thinking that informs his work across a wide range of media-from gelatin silver prints to porcelain, fiberglass, wood, and steel. Charles Ray: Figure Ground spans the whole of the artist's fifty-year career, from his early photographs and performances through his intriguing, often unsettling sculptures, some of which are published here for the first time. The essays foreground Ray's engagement with preexisting traditions, as well as charged issues around race, gender, and sexuality (notably expressed through his explorations of Mark Twain's 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and investigate the modalities of touch that run through his work. In addition, a reflection by Ray himself and a conversation between the artist and Hal Foster offer further insights into his multifaceted practice. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (January 31-June 5, 2022)

From the late 1950s to the late 1960s the word 'Pop' described any example of art, film, photography and architectural design that engaged with the new realities of mass production and the mass media. In addition to key artworks by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton and many others, this book includes works of photography and avant-garde film, as well as what the critic Reyner Banham defined as pop architecture, ranging from Alison and Peter Smithson's House of the Future to Archigram's Walking City and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas.
Edited by an internationally recognized expert on Pop art and culture, this book surveys Pop across all artforms and gives equal coverage to its American, British and European manifestations. Survey: renowned scholar and critic Hal Foster focuses on the Pop image as it developed over the period: Reyner Banham, The Independent Group and Pop Design; Richard Hamilton and the Tabular Image; Roy Lichtenstein and the Screened Image; Andy Warhol and the Seamy Image; Gerhard Richter and the Photogenic Image; Ed Ruscha and the Cineramic Image; and, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and the Postmodern Absorption of Pop. Works: each image is accompanied by an extended caption. This section is chronologically sequenced: Revolt into Style (1956-60) surveys the birth of Pop culture and its images, including the American Beat generation artists, photographers and filmmakers; Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the French Decollageistes, Richard Hamilton and the 'British Pop' of the Independent Group. Consumer Culture (1960-63) chronicles American Pop's explosion, from Roy Lichtenstein's cartoon-based paintings to Claes Oldenburg's Store and Andy Warhol's Factory. Colonization of the Mind (1963-66) looks at American Pop's reception in Europe, in the work of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and others. Spectacular Time (1966-67) surveys late Pop developments, from Warhol's Silver Clouds to Malcolm Morley's Photorealism. Helter Skelter (1968) documents Pop's demise and transformation into postmodernism, in projects such as Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas.

How artists created an aesthetic of "positive barbarism" in a world devastated by World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb In Brutal Aesthetics, leading art historian Hal Foster explores how postwar artists and writers searched for a new foundation of culture after the massive devastation of World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. Inspired by the notion that modernist art can teach us how to survive a civilization become barbaric, Foster examines the various ways that key figures from the early 1940s to the early 1960s sought to develop a "brutal aesthetics" adequate to the destruction around them. With a focus on the philosopher Georges Bataille, the painters Jean Dubuffet and Asger Jorn, and the sculptors Eduardo Paolozzi and Claes Oldenburg, Foster investigates a manifold move to strip art down, or to reveal it as already bare, in order to begin again. What does Bataille seek in the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux? How does Dubuffet imagine an art brut, an art unscathed by culture? Why does Jorn populate his paintings with "human animals"? What does Paolozzi see in his monstrous figures assembled from industrial debris? And why does Oldenburg remake everyday products from urban scrap? A study of artistic practices made desperate by a world in crisis, Brutal Aesthetics is an intriguing account of a difficult era in twentieth-century culture, one that has important implications for our own. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

A lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists "Spans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career. . . . [A] stirring exhibition in [its] own right."-New York Times "[A] weighty catalogue... illuminat[es] some less-visited corners of Richter's oeuvre."-New York Review of Books Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post-Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass. New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes: Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist's technique; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014); Peter Geimer explores the artist's enduring interest in photographic imagery; Briony Fer looks at Richter's family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions; Brinda Kumar investigates the artist's engagement with landscape as a site of memory; Andre Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter's abstract works; and Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works. As this book demonstrates, Richter's rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Met Breuer, New York (March 4-July 5, 2020) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (August 14, 2020-January 19, 2021)

The Bauhaus, the school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, brought together artists, architects and designers--among them Anni and Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lilly Reich, Oskar Schlemmer, Gunta Stolzl--in an extraordinary conversation on the nature of art in the industrial age. Aiming to rethink the form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site of a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped the world today. "Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity," published to accompany a major multimedia exhibition, is The Museum of Modern Art's first comprehensive treatment of the subject since its famous Bauhaus exhibition of 1938, and offers a new generational perspective on the twentieth century's most influential experiment in artistic education. Organized in collaboration with the three major Bauhaus collections in Germany (the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassic Stiftung Weimar), "Bauhaus 1919-1933" examines the extraordinarily broad spectrum of the school's products, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater and costume design, painting and sculpture. Many of the objects discussed and illustrated here have rarely if ever been seen or published outside Germany. Featuring approximately 400 color plates, richly complemented by documentary images, "Bauhaus 1919-1933" includes two overarching essays by the exhibition's curators, Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, that present new perspectives on the Bauhaus. Shorter essays by more than 20 leading scholars apply contemporary viewpoints to 30 key Bauhaus objects, and an illustrated narrative chronology provides a dynamic glimpse of the Bauhaus' lived history.

The title of this book, "Autofocus Retina" means a configuration of four diamond shaped mirrors connoting the inner mechanics of a camera lens: the photographic eye. Lothar Baumgarten (b. Germany 1944, living and working in Berlin/New York) presents a personal selection of photographs, sculpture, drawings and film, from the late 1960s to the present day. The book follows the creative trajectory of an artist who does not comply with the aesthetic vision of art but who continually questions the logic structuring Western thought and systems of representation. It features essays on Baumgarten's work by Hal Foster, Michael Jakob, Craig Owens, Anne Rorimer and Friedrich Wolfram Heubach. Each text has been chosen by the artist himself along with special graphic illustrations and images.

As this fourth volume begins, Prince Valiant, haunted by Aleta, seeks Merlin s wise counsel. This brief episode segues into one of Hal Foster s patented epics, The Long Voyage to Thule, which ran for seven straight months and featured Valiant s return to his birthplace and reunion with his father. Of course, Foster s astonishingly detailed and evocative depictions of Val s homeland contribute greatly to this sprawling epic. After a series of shorter adventures including The Seductress, The Call of the Sea, and The Jealous Cripple, Val finally decides he can stand it no more and sets out to find his long-lost love. Long-time fans know that his quest will eventually be successful, but Foster throws so many obstacles in the way of true love that the saga The Winning of Aleta would end up stretching a full year and a half, well into the next volume. With its stunning art reproduced directly from pristine printer s proofs, Fantagraphics has introduced a new generation to Foster s masterpiece, while providing long-time fans with the ultimate, definitive version of the strip."

Will marriage mean Valiant's gallant adventures have come to an end? Not if he has anything to say about it

A "Village Voice" Best Book of the Year, this seminal work presents new models of vision and examines modern theories of seeing in the context of contemporary critical practice.

With contributions by: Norman Bryson Jonathan Crary Martin Jay Rosalind Krauss Jacqueline Rose

Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series co-published with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership.

"Prince Valiant" set a new standard for the serial drama when it debuted in 1937. Now Foster's legendary medieval epic is collected in a sumptuous new hardcover series, with each volume containing a full year's worth of strips in an oversized format showcasing the strip's spectacular, fully restored color artwork.

Will marriage mean Valiant's gallant adventures have come to an end? Not if he has anything to say about it

For 35 years, Hal Foster created epic adventure and romantic fantasy in his legendary Sunday strip, Prince Valiant. Realistic in its visual execution and noble in its subject, depicting a time in which the fabled warriors of history and legends fought together for the greater good, it remains one of the great masterpieces of the medium. In this second volume, Prince Valiant helps his father reclaim his throne in kingdom of Thule, fights alongside King Arthur, and is made a knight of the Round Table in recompense for his bravery and wit. Bored by the peace he helped to create, Val decides to independently pull together the forces to battle the Huns descent on Southern Europe. When Val s army breaches the Huns stronghold, however, he discovers that corruption reigns still further west in Rome. Thus Val sets off with Sir Gawain and Tristam of Arthurian legend fame, and the familial kinship of the trio sees them through chivalrous escapades, false imprisonment and daring escapes. By the end of this volume, they go their separate ways, and Val boards a ship to Sicily yet a storm approaches, throwing him off-course, as adventure follows him everywhere. Fantagraphics is proud to present these strips, which, thanks to the use of original proof sheets and advances in printing technology, are even brighter and crisper than when they were originally published 70 years ago. Foster s work, painterly and sweeping, is finally treated to the grand depiction it deserves. These illustrative, time-honored comic strips will enthrall old readers and just as easily awe new ones."

Who branded painting in the Pop age more brazenly than Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Ed Ruscha? And who probed the Pop revolution in image and identity more intensely than they? In "The First Pop Age," leading critic and historian Hal Foster presents an exciting new interpretation of Pop art through the work of these Pop Five.

Beautifully illustrated in color throughout, the book reveals how these seminal artists hold on to old forms of art while drawing on new subjects of media; how they strike an ambiguous attitude toward both high art and mass culture; and how they suggest that a heightened confusion between images and people is definitive of Pop culture at large.

As "The First Pop Age" looks back to the early years of Pop art, it also raises important questions about the present: What has changed in the look of screened and scanned images today? Is our media environment qualitatively different from that described by Warhol and company? Have we moved beyond the Pop age, or do we live in its aftermath?

A masterful account of one of the most important periods of twentieth-century art, this is a book that also sheds new light on our complex relationship to images today.

For the past thirty years, Hal Foster has pushed the boundaries of cultural criticism, establishing a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. In "The Anti-Aesthetic," preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword that situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, "The Anti-Aesthetic" provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. Includes a new afterword by Hal Foster and 12 black and white photographs.

Our tenth volume finds our band of heroes making their way back to the Kingdom of Thule by way of Constantinople and Eastern Russia. Soon they are attacked by a tribe of barbarians who kidnap Aleta for the great Dragada Khan who wants to make her one of his wives. After nearly being killed in battle, Valiant returns to his homeland only to find the threat of hunger hovers over Thule. As Val explores new ways of feeding the kingdom s growing populace, raiders threaten the lives of his family and friends. The volume ends with Val s return to Camelot, a tournament of champions, and the threat of new treachery in Cornwall. This volume also includes an introduction by legendary comics artist Timothy Truman, and a special gallery containing more of Hal Foster s incredible Mountie paintings annotated by comics historian Brian M. Kane."