Artie Foster
PhD Candidate, Euro-American Modern & Contemporary Art
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About
Artie is a PhD candidate in the Art History department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in modern and contemporary Euro-American art. He is especially interested in the material and cultural changes painting underwent from the 1960s to the 90s -- wherein issues of form, identity, representation, and perception were hotly debated -- and the aesthetic and political shifts these changes signal.
Artie is also a lecturer in art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent course offerings include:
- How Do We Do Art History? Introduction to Art History and Its Methods (UIC '22, '23, '24)
- How Did Art Begin? The Origins of Art and Its History, Prehistory - Renaissance (SAIC '24, '25)
- How Did Art Become Modern? Global Modern and Contemporary Art, Renaissance - Contemporary (SAIC '24)
- What Happened After Modern Art? Trends in Art History After 1960 (UIC '22, '23, '24)
- Black + Art = (UIC '25)
Artie has received grants and fellowships supporting his research, including the Getty Library Research Grant ('25), the Fine and Performing Arts International Research Fellowship ('25), the Ross Edman Art History Fellowship ('23), the UIC Art History Travel and Research Award ('24, '22, '21), the Charles D. Cutler Grant ('22), the UIC Provost's Graduate Research Award ('20), among others.
Service to Community
Art History Alumni Committee, Lake Forest College, 2024 - present
Art History Graduate Student Association, co-president, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2020-2022
Visiting Artists and Scholars Committee, president, The George Washington University, 2018-2019
Education
MA in Art History at The George Washington University, 2019
BA in Art History, BA in Communication at Lake Forest College, 2014
Selected Presentations
"New Waves, New Media: Material transformations in painting during the 1980s," Frank Bowling Studio guest lecture, 2025
"Untimely Modernism: Collage and painting in the 21st century," Hauser & Wirth Paris conference, 2025
"Who's Afraid of Frank Bowling? Painting for and against anti-colonialism," College Art Association conference, 2025
"'Within the Boundaries of Formalism': Modernism, Form, and Freedom," Midwest Art History Society conference, 2024
"Painting, Form, and Identity in the Era of Black Power," Agnes Scott College guest lecture, 2024
"Spread Out Frank Bowling: A transition from spray paint to impasto," College Art Association conference, 2024
"In the Crosshairs of Empire: Diaspora and post-colonialism in Frank Bowling's Africa to Australia," Tufts University Art History Graduate Symposium, 2022
"A Flexible Formalism: Collisions between Abstract Expressionism and Pop," Midwest Art History Society conference, 2022
Research Currently in Progress
Artie is currently writing a dissertation about painting during the transition from the modern to postmodern era, using the work of painter Frank Bowling and his anachronistic embrace of modernist formalism after 1970 as a case study. The dissertation highlights how Bowling, and other likeminded artists, attempted to resuscitate the progressive dimensions of the Euro-American avant-garde (though rejecting their retrograde attitudes towards race, sex, and other markers of difference), while also experimenting with certain postmodernist idioms that posed critical challenges to their formalist practices.
Artistic and Professional Performances and Exhibits
Learning Together: Art, Education, and Community, research and curatorial assistant, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2024
For Each Other, research and curatorial assistant, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2022
Chronicle of a Fall: Nadav Assor & Tirza Even, preparator, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2022
A Species of Theft, preparator, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2022
Networks of Resistance, co-curator and programming chair, Co-Prosperity Sphere/Art In These Times, 2019
6.13.89: The Canceling of the Mapplethorpe Exhibition, co-curator, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2018-2019
Fast Fashion/Slow Art, research assistant, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2018-2019