Synopses & Reviews
Hal Foster, author of the acclaimed
Design and Crime, argues that a fusion of architecture and art is a defining feature of contemporary culture. While architects such as Zaha Hadid and Herzog & de Meuron draw on art to reanimate design, architecture has inspired fundamental transformations in painting, sculpture and film, subjects which are also explored here. The book includes an extensive conversation with Richard Serra.
At the same time, Foster delineates a “global style” of architecture, as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, analogous to the “international style” of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies. More than any art, today’s global style conveys the look of modernity, both its dreams and its delusions. In these ways Foster demonstrates that the “art-architecture complex” is a key indicator of broader social and economic trajectories and in urgent need of analysis and debate.
Review
"Brimming with ideas and analysis … forceful, informed opinions." Observer
Review
"As an architecture writer reading Foster, who comes from the direction of art theory, I find it refreshing to encounter a degree of intellectual rigour you don’t find too often on my side of the fence." Rowan Moore
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"A worldview expansive enough to see dominant tendencies in contemporary architecture and (fairly) recent arts as flipsides of the same coin, and both as reflective of the contemporary political order. This, then, is criticism with vaulting ambitions." Art Review
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"A timely tome with an urgent message for anyone on the art or architecture axis." Stephen Walker Times Higher Education
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"Hal Foster’s newest contribution to the genre stands alone … Foster is terrific at unearthing the unintended consequences of our consumer-oriented culture, in particular on those architects who imagine their work as critiques of consumerism" Time Out
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"Prepares the ground for a wide-ranging and nuanced discussion of the contemporary links between artistic and architectural practice." Library Journal
Review
"The Art-Architecture Complex is a persistently insightful, elliptical account of an ambiguous symbiosis." JM Cava Arcade
Synopsis
A leading art theorist analyses the global style in art and architecture
Synopsis
Hal Foster, author of the acclaimed
Design and Crime, argues that a fusion of architecture and art is a defining feature of contemporary culture. He identifies a “global style” of architecture—as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano—analogous to the international style of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies.
More than any art, today’s global style conveys both the dreams and delusions of modernity. Foster demonstrates that a study of the “art-architecture complex” provides invaluable insight into broader social and economic trajectories in urgent need of analysis.
About the Author
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, Recording, The Return of the Real, Compulsive Beauty and The Art-Architecture Complex.