In the first half of this compelling collection of essays Hal Foster surveys our new "political economy of design," exploring the marketing of culture and the branding of identity, the development of spectacle-architecture and the rise of global cities. In a second series of texts, he examines the historical relations of modern art and the modern museum, the conceptual vicissitudes of art history and visual studies, the recent travails of art criticism, and the double aftermath of modernism and postmodernism. Written in a lively style, Design and Crime offers historical sketches and contemporary test-cases in an attempt to illuminate the conditions for critical culture in the present.

Author Biography

Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. A co-editor of October magazine and books, he is the editor of The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture and author of Compulsive Beauty and The Return of the Real.