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Art and politics: on the critic Hal Foster: do the ideas of the avant-garde still make sense in a multi-polar artworld?

Article Excerpt
The last ten years have witnessed an extraordinary boom in the art market. An emphasis on money or spectacle overshadows all other types of conversations about the value of contemporary art. For those in search of a different approach, Hal Foster has always been a voice to heed. In his articles in the London Review of Books, Artforum and The Nation, as well as his books and contributions to the already classic Art Since 1900 (Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin Buchloh, 2005), Foster shows why the questions we ought to ask about art are not how much it can be sold for or whether it enables underrepresented minorities to speak. And he still sees a use for the idea of an avant-garde.

There is a vast room on the second floor of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome that contains nothing but futurist works of 'regime art.' Many pieces that have origins in fascist iconography easily belong--the international conversation of form can't be mistaken--with their European peers of the teens, 20s and 30s, most of which had radically opposed ideological allegiances and philosophical underpinnings. The commonalities these pro-fascist regime works have with Vorticism or Art Deco are easy enough to recognize. However, thinking about Soviet Constructivism when faced with a large ensemble of Italian nationalist speed-movement paintings--topped by the Duce's phallically protruding chin ("I am referring here to the group of paintings by Gerardo Dottori, Polittico fascista, 1934")--gives one pause. Surely, Fortunato Depero and Max Ernst can't be related?

Hal Foster notes that it is impossible to understand the meaning of the avant-garde without taking into account its diachronic positioning; simply put, historicity is of the essence for the meaning of an artwork. Thinking about the avant-garde, Foster argues that we must begin by asking a number of questions. Do avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes--irrespective of their claims of originality--have precedents, descendents, any historical kin? How was the earliest avant-garde incorporated into the structures it was trying to redefine, and in the process...

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