The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture
Citation
Foster, Hal, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983. ISBN not verified in this round.
UK edition: Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1985.
Relevance
The foundational anthology of postmodern cultural theory in the Anglophone world. Foster assembled essays by the key critics of the moment — Jean Baudrillard, Jürgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson, Rosalind Krauss, Craig Owens, Edward Said, Gregory Ulmer, and others. The “anti-aesthetic” concept — a critique of modernism’s autonomy claim for art — bears directly on the ideological critique of The Family of Man as a modernist-humanist exhibition: the show was constructed precisely around an aesthetic of universal feeling that the October critics and their allies were dismantling. The anthology consolidated the intellectual context in which Phillips 1982, Sekula 1981/1986, and Solomon-Godeau 1991 must be read.
Tier 2: Bay Press is a small academic press in the photography- and art-theory publishing tradition (comparable to NSCAD Press). The contributors are university-press and peer-reviewed journal authors. The anthology is standard reading on postmodernism syllabi in art history and cultural studies programmes.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): No URL located for this book. No Internet Archive record found in this session. No fetch attempted. Body text NOT consulted in this round.
- Publisher (Bay Press, 1983) and editor (Hal Foster) confirmed from Wikipedia article on Hal Foster (fetched 2026-04-30 as “Hal Foster (art critic)”). The Wikipedia article did not list contributor names for the 1983 anthology or provide an ISBN; contributor list carried from secondary citation in postmodern-theory literature.
- No verbatim passage can be quoted from a primary fetch in this round.
Notes
- Foster was associated with October journal and with the Bay Press / Dia Art Foundation critical circuit in the 1980s. This anthology was one of Bay Press’s founding publications and established the press’s profile in critical theory.
- Cross-reference to
src-foster-1985-recodings(Foster’s own essay collection, same press). Cross-reference tosrc-foster-1988-vision-visuality(later Foster-edited anthology). Cross-reference tosrc-krauss-1985-originality-avant-garde(Krauss essays, companion volume at MIT Press). - Cross-reference to
src-phillips-1982-judgment-seat(Phillips’s essay appeared in October the year before this anthology; the two are part of the same critical moment). Cross-reference tosrc-sekula-1981andsrc-sekula-1986. - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995(anchor for Family of Man reception history): Sandeen situates the critical-theoretical tradition represented by this anthology within the reception of humanist documentary photography. verified: false: No URL located; no Internet Archive record found; no fetch attempted. Publisher, editor, and year carried from Wikipedia (fetched 2026-04-30). ISBN and contributor list carried from secondary citation in postmodern-theory literature; NOT verified against a primary source in this round.