“I’m a writer first, a critic-historian-theorist second. That said, I’ve never wanted the writing to be self-involved or involuted; I’ve always wanted to be as lucid as possible—difficult but lucid… I don’t like it when criticism becomes subjectivist; that’s not much more than sensibility criticism come again…

“Most people think we are in a ‘post-critical age’; they even hope we are. I understand the fatigue with the negativity of criticism, but mostly that fatigue is laziness—and an anti-intellectualism that is far more American than apple pie ever was. It’s obvious that we need criticism now more than ever.” — Hal Foster*

Hal Foster—who is a visiting Getty scholar this semester and whose new book collects fifteen years of conversations with Richard Serra—recently spoke at LACMA, and will give two more public conversations over the next week or so.

JASON E. SMITH PRESENTS HAL FOSTER

Tuesday, February 26, at 7:30 pm

ArtCenter College of Design

Hillside Campus

1700 Lida Street, Pasadena.

HAL FOSTER AND CHARLES RAY

Wednesday, March 6, at 7:30 pm.

Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles.

*Jarrett Earnest, “Hal Foster,” in What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2018), 154.

From top: Hal Foster, courtesy Hammer Museum; book cover credits: Yale University Press; Verso Books (cover illustration, Isa Genzken, X-Ray, 1991, black-and-white photograph, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin and Cologne); The New Press.