The Return of the Real: The Avante-Garde at the End of the Century [Paperback]

Hal Foster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1996

In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today.After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s; Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real -- to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites: If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-garde; it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation -- and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dividing the century into two avant-gardes, the author passes on the one that runs from Picasso to Pollock and lays claim to another that begins with Duchamp and continues through Warhol into the present, a new avant-garde whose praxis will be bound to theory not metaphor. Foster, who teaches art history and comparative literature at Cornell and is an editor of the journal October, claims for his generation of cultural theorists, who came of age in the wake of minimalist and conceptual art, the primacy of ideas with their potential connection to real political time and space over objects. Following the leads of Althusser and Lacan, he urges structuralist re-readings of radical texts (including art) for content that breaks with "our decentered relations to the language of our unconscious" and "humanist problems of alienation." A chapter on recent "abject art" (like Mike Kelley and John Miller) finds interest in its surrealist-style rebellion to be as limited as ever by adolescent anarchical antics. For more productive models, Foster advocates the work of Renee Green, Mary Kelly, Fred Wilson?artists whose interdisciplinary approach bridges art, anthropology and ethnology. Thus as the old academy of the studio is replaced by this new one of the seminar room, reading becomes a primary activity for all, including artists, critics and historians. This book, however, is heavy reading throughout, and not a sentence goes by without linguistic convolution bringing the mind to a halt and forcing a re-reading. It's a brilliant work, but outside the seminar room, most readers will quickly decide to give up the struggle.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Since the late 1950s, art and critical theory have been increasingly linked, both by artists themselves and by commentators. Editor of the journal October, Foster (art history and comparative literature, Cornell Univ.) discusses here a wide range of artists (including Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, Barbara Kruger, Mike Kelley, and Cindy Sherman) to explore his ideation of the avant-garde and the regrounding of art in materiality. Focusing on art and artists active after 1960, Foster traces the movement from "art-as-text" in the 1970s, to "art-as-simulacrum" in the 1980s, to contemporary art that is moving more toward materiality. For those not conversant with the language and ideology of contemporary critical theory, Foster's discussion of developments since 1960 will be hard to follow. Recommended only for larger academic collections.?Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 299 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262561077
• ISBN-13: 978-0262561075
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Modern

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How can this be anything but five stars!, July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Return of the Real: The Avante-Garde at the End of the Century (Paperback)

Granted, I'm not a Phd. in art history, so I can't claim how much of Foster's thinking is his own and how much he "borrows," but these essays, all interrelated and commenting on each other, carefully dissect postwar art, culture, politics, theory. I've read these essays four or five times and come away with a different insight on art each time. The definite highlight for me was the essay on traumatic realism (which ranges from the opposing simulacral and ideological readings of Warhol, to the tearing of the screen in Cindy Sherman, to the abject in art, to the opposing needs to deconstruct the subject and also reaffirm the subject in racial/sexual/cultural discourse.) Whew! It's a daring essay and is the rosetta stone, I think, of the entire book. His insight on the loss of critical distance (which accounts for why the Left and Right sound so much alike these days)needs to be heeded. Long live all the October writers!

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very productive reading, November 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Return of the Real: The Avante-Garde at the End of the Century (Paperback)

The book is full of productive suggestions for writing on contemporary visual arts. For a foreign reader, it provides a cogent overview of different moments in recent art; a fine sampling of commentary on theoretical writing, and valuable insight into current art criticism in the U.S. "The Return of the Real", meaning by that the Lacanian "Real", is a thought-provoking, stimulating idea that runs through the book and has refreshed my own critical work. I am indebted to this book.

15 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting essays, but ..., September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Return of the Real: The Avante-Garde at the End of the Century (Paperback)

Foster is a good synthesizer on contemporary art, but ... when you read the footnotes, it feels like he's doin a lot of borrowing from other, less known work. And he never really discusses about the art he mentions, it's all allusions and side comments. And photos of pieces he never even mentions in the text. Still, it's about the best book-lentgh work I can think of on this, and some of the essays are killer.