February 27: Hal Foster—Fail Better
Presented by 192 Books, Hal Foster in conversation with Ben Lerner to discuss his new book Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics (MIT Press, 2025)
This event will take place in person at 192 Books at 192 10th Ave on Thursday, February 27th at 7:00 PM ET. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. The discussion will also be streamed directly on this page. There is no login required. A recording will be archived.
Books will be available for sale after the conversation.
Hal Foster—Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics (MIT Press, 2025)
In these 40 texts, Foster reviews artists from Richard Hamilton and Jasper Johns to Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha; considers contemporaries from Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman to Jeremy Deller and Adam Pendleton; and traces the development of criticism since the early 1960s, with essays on such influential figures as Susan Sontag and Rosalind Krauss and institutions like Artforum magazine and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Taking his title from Beckett—“try again, fail again, fail better”—Foster notes that an essay is always an attempt, more or less failed. Critics fail artworks, because there can never be a definitive reading; art fails its historical moment, because it cannot resolve the contradictions that prompt it. But in these failures Foster finds historical consciousness, and with it the promise of future work, future illumination.
Hal Foster is the Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. He is the author of What Comes After Farce? and Brutal Aesthetics, among other books. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he coedits October, and writes regularly for The London Review of Books. His newest book Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics publishes with The MIT Press in February.
Photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Ben Lerner is the author of eight books of poetry and prose as well as several collaborations with visual artists. His most recent book of poetry, The Lights, was published last fall by FSG, and his most recent novel, The Topeka School, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, among other honors, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.