Hal Foster’s “Art-Architecture Complex Sheds Light on the Contemporary Merge between Art & Architecture

Turner publishing company launches 'El complejo arte-arquitectura', a text in which art critic Hal Foster (Seattle, 1955) tackles the contemporary merge between art and architecture.

Architecture is one of the artistic disciplines that have suffered the most with this crisis. Nevertheless, despite it sometimes is consigned to the construction of buildings in which practice and efficiency play the leading roles, the architectural sector stands as one of the most innovative artistic fields of recent years.

Art-architecture Complex analyzes how architecture comes closer to art and art looks like architecture. This feedback represents a defining characteristic of contemporary culture.

A New Age

Therefore, we are facing a new age in terms of stylistic innovations within architecture, a discipline that has usually been put apart from the rest of artistic expressions. “We relate pop with music, fashion, art and many other things, never with architecture. However, pop has always been linked to architectural debates”, Foster notes.

In order to underline the idiosyncrasy of this art field, Hal Foster identifies and defines a “global style” of the architecture that is presently being practiced by bold-face names. This innovative style includes elements of Le Corbusier, Gropius or Mies van der Rohe.

Benchmark

The text describes the main contemporary art exhibition centers, placing special emphasis on those artists and architects that participate in this creative merge that works as guide mark for this book. Some of the works included belong to Norman Foster, Richard Rogers or Renzo Piano, among others.

The terminological intelligence and literary artfulness applied by Foster to analyze the work of remarkable architects from the present and past of this discipline turn Art-architecture Complex into a key benchmark, working as a comprehensive guide, authorized source and solid base to study and reflect on this matter.

Critic & Professor

Hal Foster has focused his work on the role played by the avant-garde within the postmodernity, a sphere in which his works are described as thinking milestones. He worked as a professor at Cornell University until 1997, and he has been working in Princeton ever since. He was granted a Guggenheim scholarship in 1998.

He has previously published several works, such as, Diseño y delito, Belleza compulsiva and El retorno de lo real: La vanguardia a finales de siglo.

Source: Hoy es arte