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The Art-Architecture Complex
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 styleâ€� of architecture—as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano—analogous to the international style of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies.Ìý
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.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
316 pages, Hardcover
First published October 24, 2011
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474 people want to read
About the author
Hal Foster
298Ìýbooks136ÌýfollowersHal Foster is a Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University specializing in 20th century art.
Note: for the comic book artist, see .
Note: for the comic book artist, see .
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 20, 2018
Reading Vasari at a booshie bistro I once overhead some Well-To-Do person says in an interview, “It’s important for us that the artist does the art and the architects do the architecting and we keep them at their own thing.� I pictured a tug-o-war between architects wishing to will some ornamentation into their work, as well as sculpture wanting to attain the adage of functionality to its operandi. (I also heard fresco is becoming fashionable.)
Isn’t that a good preamble? Well, that’s it. Cause, well, I didn’t really get this book. And I’ll be the first to admit it, (unlike my fellow reviews who are Dickensian in their artful doge.) It’s a little dense. Sometimes I wish, (I ashamed to admit) Foster would just tell me if a thing is good or not.
Here’s the longshrot of it. Well, when big fancy buildings are built, are the sign-signifies in use, are they cast in marble? When a courthouse uses glass for its exterior, does it really signify transparency? Do we expect the people that work there to suddenly act more ethical? Or is the glitter meant to disway us from the all-evil business as usual? Has Apollo’s merciless beautify become merely a brand for cooperation’s and governments to flaunt their bling? Should architecture be like a piece of art? Or should it be like a building?
The problem with Postmodernism in its architecture form is that it’s too cash friendly. It’s too cozy with spectacle. And buildings that take their forms from nature, it turns out, they’re somewhat impractical Buildings don’t occur in nature save the occasional bird nest stadium. (but that birdnest is a spectacle, and spectacles generally have junk food stalls around them) But PostMod’s problem is that it’s all surface. Barleycorn. Disney.
If the reader questions the problem of spectacle here’s a section from another review I clipped:
Debord’s notion of the ‘spectacle�: in Society of the Spectacle social life is argued to have been transformed from ‘being� to ‘having� to ‘appearing�, to the point that the ‘spectacle� of economic life cannot be grasped and changed by men, so separated is it from their working lives.
Minimalism for Foster saves the day. The minimalists were the only ones to take this anti-illusionism, anti-spectacle thing to its merciless end. Wise be the architects who take up the minimalist purity and spare the edifices of graven images. (Iiiii guess) As Koolhaas has remarked “Minimum is the ultimate ornament. It’s a self-righteous crime, the contemporary baroque. Minimum is the maximum in drag. It does not signify beauty but guilt.�
In fact one of the craziest parts, well, so, ok, well this’ll be tough for me. So, so, Modernity started with function follows form. Now it kept its course until a few lapses in Pop and postmodern. Well, in came minimalism on Don Q’s horse. But at that moment is architecture ‘minimalist� or was it always ‘Modernist�? Was modernity minimalism of the future? Eh? And even then, if this is our playbook, we can clearly see that precedent didn’t come from the Chicago style, the Bauhaus, but further east to the Russian Constructionists. It’s ironic cause Malevich worked in consumer goods. He was a packaging whiz. He was like a proto-Warhol only not a soulless zombie. Modernity/minimalism was good business for consumer culture even back then.
Well, that’s review anyway. Bit long. I probably misunderstood a lot of this. If anyone has truck with what I wrote, I invite them to put forth their complaints, or, as we say in the Modernist world, put up or shut up.
Isn’t that a good preamble? Well, that’s it. Cause, well, I didn’t really get this book. And I’ll be the first to admit it, (unlike my fellow reviews who are Dickensian in their artful doge.) It’s a little dense. Sometimes I wish, (I ashamed to admit) Foster would just tell me if a thing is good or not.
Here’s the longshrot of it. Well, when big fancy buildings are built, are the sign-signifies in use, are they cast in marble? When a courthouse uses glass for its exterior, does it really signify transparency? Do we expect the people that work there to suddenly act more ethical? Or is the glitter meant to disway us from the all-evil business as usual? Has Apollo’s merciless beautify become merely a brand for cooperation’s and governments to flaunt their bling? Should architecture be like a piece of art? Or should it be like a building?
The problem with Postmodernism in its architecture form is that it’s too cash friendly. It’s too cozy with spectacle. And buildings that take their forms from nature, it turns out, they’re somewhat impractical Buildings don’t occur in nature save the occasional bird nest stadium. (but that birdnest is a spectacle, and spectacles generally have junk food stalls around them) But PostMod’s problem is that it’s all surface. Barleycorn. Disney.
If the reader questions the problem of spectacle here’s a section from another review I clipped:
Debord’s notion of the ‘spectacle�: in Society of the Spectacle social life is argued to have been transformed from ‘being� to ‘having� to ‘appearing�, to the point that the ‘spectacle� of economic life cannot be grasped and changed by men, so separated is it from their working lives.
Minimalism for Foster saves the day. The minimalists were the only ones to take this anti-illusionism, anti-spectacle thing to its merciless end. Wise be the architects who take up the minimalist purity and spare the edifices of graven images. (Iiiii guess) As Koolhaas has remarked “Minimum is the ultimate ornament. It’s a self-righteous crime, the contemporary baroque. Minimum is the maximum in drag. It does not signify beauty but guilt.�
In fact one of the craziest parts, well, so, ok, well this’ll be tough for me. So, so, Modernity started with function follows form. Now it kept its course until a few lapses in Pop and postmodern. Well, in came minimalism on Don Q’s horse. But at that moment is architecture ‘minimalist� or was it always ‘Modernist�? Was modernity minimalism of the future? Eh? And even then, if this is our playbook, we can clearly see that precedent didn’t come from the Chicago style, the Bauhaus, but further east to the Russian Constructionists. It’s ironic cause Malevich worked in consumer goods. He was a packaging whiz. He was like a proto-Warhol only not a soulless zombie. Modernity/minimalism was good business for consumer culture even back then.
Well, that’s review anyway. Bit long. I probably misunderstood a lot of this. If anyone has truck with what I wrote, I invite them to put forth their complaints, or, as we say in the Modernist world, put up or shut up.
November 13, 2021
Too much art, not enough architecture
November 17, 2012
An insightful and informative read that not only raises, but thoroughly explores questions about the (at times tenuous) relationship between art and architecture. Unless you have a pretty significant frame of reference when it comes to contemporary architects and contemporary artists (particularly the minimalists), understand that you'll have to do quite a bit of supplemental research on your own as you go. For the record, it's completely worth it. Not a light investment of your time, but already a book I'm sure I'll return to over and over again.
September 21, 2021
Es un libro en el cual se aborda las relaciones sensibles entre la arquitectura contemporánea y el arte moderno a través de la obra de artistas y arquitectos. La estructura del libro se compone de dos partes la primera reflexionando sobre arquitectura a través de despachos de arquitectos que han tenido en sus obras relaciones muy intensas y cercanas al arte
Toma de analogÃa a Richard Rogers, Norman Foster y Renzo Piano como estandarte de una generación postmoderna que después de finales del siglo XX que tuvieron una cercanÃa con algún tipo de influencia artÃstica y que en su obra se expresan algunas intenciones artÃsticas. Los arquitectos contemporáneos que analiza son Zaha Hadid, Diller Scofidio + Renfro y Herzog & DeMeuron. De cada caso de estudio extrae algunas de las obras más representativas y las analiza desde el mundo de las formas y las imágenes.
Dentro de la segunda parte del libro retoma y analiza a Richard Serra, Anthony McCall, Donald Judd, Robert Irwin, David Smith y Dan Falvin cuyas obras el autor Hal Foster ha detectado cierta relación directa o indirecta con la arquitectura, analizandolas desde cuestiones de espacio y forma. De los arquitectos busco las relaciones con el arte moderno y contemporáneo; y viceversa con los artistas ya que buscó la relación con la arquitectura dentro de las obras.
Me pareció un libro de muchos conceptos muy interesantes que abordan de manera muy sintética la temática relacionando ambas disciplinas, mostrando siempre un punto de vista crÃtico en cada análisis.
Toma de analogÃa a Richard Rogers, Norman Foster y Renzo Piano como estandarte de una generación postmoderna que después de finales del siglo XX que tuvieron una cercanÃa con algún tipo de influencia artÃstica y que en su obra se expresan algunas intenciones artÃsticas. Los arquitectos contemporáneos que analiza son Zaha Hadid, Diller Scofidio + Renfro y Herzog & DeMeuron. De cada caso de estudio extrae algunas de las obras más representativas y las analiza desde el mundo de las formas y las imágenes.
Dentro de la segunda parte del libro retoma y analiza a Richard Serra, Anthony McCall, Donald Judd, Robert Irwin, David Smith y Dan Falvin cuyas obras el autor Hal Foster ha detectado cierta relación directa o indirecta con la arquitectura, analizandolas desde cuestiones de espacio y forma. De los arquitectos busco las relaciones con el arte moderno y contemporáneo; y viceversa con los artistas ya que buscó la relación con la arquitectura dentro de las obras.
Me pareció un libro de muchos conceptos muy interesantes que abordan de manera muy sintética la temática relacionando ambas disciplinas, mostrando siempre un punto de vista crÃtico en cada análisis.
December 29, 2019
Livro sobre as interações entre arte e arquitetura contemporânea, focado nas obras de arquitetos que representam movimentos que perpassam as duas práticas, seja a continuação do modernismo nas práticas de renzo piano, richard rogers e norman foster, estas orientadas pelo pop high tech de banham, ou práticas orientadas pela fenomenologia e que buscam criar 'atmosferas', como no caso de herzog e de meuron.
May 15, 2021
Connects a lot of interesting pieces & theories of art with architecture in a way that helps you to better understand both contemporary architecture as well as how it's been influenced by both landscape architecture and other types of art, i.e. painting. An underrated book that reads philosophically as well as historically, though the later chapters could use some development.
August 26, 2013
This reads less like a book with a point to make, more like one with questions to pose. For a reader with extremely little knowledge of art and architecture, such as myself, its thrust can be hard to follow. Its main aim is to examine the interplay between art and architecture, but it reads almost like a follow-up to a discussion to which you weren't party - the evidence for a contention you didn't hear.
Chapters 2 to 4 provide an overview of the careers and styles of three architects whose work Foster proposes represents a "global style", but quite what this has to do with art or art's relations to architecture never became clear.
In the rest of the book the relation is generally clearer, but still not continuously apparent. It tends to weave in and out, rather than always being the obvious focus.
That said, Foster is quite an engaging writer and he managed to keep me interested despite my fairly frequent disorientation. His writing is clear for the most part even for the uninitiated - something that is highlighted by some rather more opaque quotations from other critics and artists in the endnotes.
I feel like I learnt quite a lot from this book - stuff that it was probably assumed I would already know. I also feel like I gained a reasonable appreciation of what Foster was actually trying to tell me, even though I wasn't really sufficiently equipped to hear what he was saying.
Chapters 2 to 4 provide an overview of the careers and styles of three architects whose work Foster proposes represents a "global style", but quite what this has to do with art or art's relations to architecture never became clear.
In the rest of the book the relation is generally clearer, but still not continuously apparent. It tends to weave in and out, rather than always being the obvious focus.
That said, Foster is quite an engaging writer and he managed to keep me interested despite my fairly frequent disorientation. His writing is clear for the most part even for the uninitiated - something that is highlighted by some rather more opaque quotations from other critics and artists in the endnotes.
I feel like I learnt quite a lot from this book - stuff that it was probably assumed I would already know. I also feel like I gained a reasonable appreciation of what Foster was actually trying to tell me, even though I wasn't really sufficiently equipped to hear what he was saying.
January 16, 2015
Although the author warns the reader since the first pages about the book being a general overview on the subject more than a comprehensive study of the relationship between art and architecture, I found the result quite confusing. The first problem is about the complete lack of any structure, the author jumps from topic to topic chapter after chapter without following a coherent (or clear) narration, so it always feels like reading a collection of writings held together by the words "art" and "architecture". Second, the selection of architects and artists is highly arbitrary and never properly articulated, there is no explanation of the criteria the author used to pick certain topics and discard others.
The main problem though for me was that this art-architecture complex is never treated as such. Even using the same selected themes one could trace many more connections between the influence of artistic development on architectural culture, and vice-versa on the consequences of specific architectural theories and practices on art, without necessarily complicating things.
Overall, the book is too simple for specialists of both fields but at the same time I wouldn't suggest it to a neophyte searching for a clear overview.
If you bought this book already, my suggestion is to jump straight to the final chapter and read the interview to Richard Serra to have an idea of what it means to clearly understand spatial practices in relation to art.
The main problem though for me was that this art-architecture complex is never treated as such. Even using the same selected themes one could trace many more connections between the influence of artistic development on architectural culture, and vice-versa on the consequences of specific architectural theories and practices on art, without necessarily complicating things.
Overall, the book is too simple for specialists of both fields but at the same time I wouldn't suggest it to a neophyte searching for a clear overview.
If you bought this book already, my suggestion is to jump straight to the final chapter and read the interview to Richard Serra to have an idea of what it means to clearly understand spatial practices in relation to art.
December 31, 2011
good overview of contemporary relationship between art practice and architectural practice assembled as a series of essays on contemporary architects and artists highlighting themes and ideas. hal foster is able to distill often complex concepts through lucid observation and insight.
November 16, 2013
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