‘The Art-Architecture Complex’

The 20th century witnessed a slow creep of art into architecture (and vice versa), from Vladimir Tatlin’s famous unbuilt monument to Constructivism to Dan Flavin’s fluorescent monument to Tatlin. In The Art-Architecture Complex, Princeton University art theorist Hal Foster surveys the culmination of diverse design fields into a “global style” epitomized by such firms as Herzog & de Meuron and Renzo Piano Building Workshop. To emphasize the point, Foster contributes a lengthy interview with artist Richard Serra exploring the collapse of Minimalist sculpture, contemporary architecture, and even film into a singular formal narrative about structure and space. • $26.95; Verso, October 2011