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). 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.
A livestream and archived recording will be available at https://paulacoopergallery-studio.com/posts.