The art critic and historian Hal Foster (2023 Resident) writes, “This talk is prompted by two coincidences that have troubled me for many years. The first coincidence involves the use of the same word, banality, in two controversies in the early 1960s. One controversy was political, provoked by Hannah Arendt with her analysis of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. The other controversy was aesthetic, sparked by the rise of Pop art. Arendt intended her notorious phrase ‘the banality of evil’ as a neutral description, not a moral judgment, and this enraged her critics all the more. Why? What did ‘banality’ signify to them? Meanwhile, the opponents of Pop condemned the new art as ‘banal’; it was not at all neutral for them. Yet why this term in particular? What did it evoke? Why did these two controversies, otherwise separate, converge on this one word?”

A prolific author and a historian of modern and contemporary art, design, architecture, and postmodern theory, Hal Foster is the Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He is the 2023 Rea S. Hederman Critic in Residence at the Academy.

The lecture will be held in English.

The Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture, to be presented in person at the Academy as well as on Zoom, is free and open to the public.

The Friends of the Library supports the Academy’s Arthur & Janet C. Ross Library through annual dues and special initiatives. The group also helps to raise awareness of the Library’s resources through regular programs. Join online today!

Notice

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