Stardumb

by Dave Hickey

STARDUMB is the astrology book for the art world at the millennium. Psychedelic artist, John deFazio and writer-critic, Dave Hickey, have created an up-scale divertissement at the intersection of star culture and art-star culture at the end of the century. Based on their own deeply knowledgeable and willfully perverse visions of contemporary culture, deFazio and Hickey each provide their own ebullient interpretations of the twelve zodiac archetypes.

60 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 2000

About the author

David Hickey (born circa 1939) is an American art and cultural critic. He has written for many American publications including Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Artforum, Harper's Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He is currently Professor of English at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and Distinguished Professor of Criticism for the MFA Program in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of New Mexico.

Known for his arguments against academicism and in favor of the effects of rough-and-tumble free markets on art, his critical essays have been published in two volumes: The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993) and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997). In 2009, Hickey published a revised and updated version of The Invisible Dragon, adding an introduction that addressed changes in the art world since the book's original publication, as well as a new concluding essay. He has been the subject of profiles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World Report, Texas Monthly, and elsewhere. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius grant."

Hickey graduated from Texas Christian University in 1961 and received his PhD from the University of Texas two years later. In 1989, SMU Press published Prior Convictions, a volume of his short fiction. He was owner-director of A Clean Well-Lighted Place, an art gallery in Austin, Texas and director of Reese Palley Gallery in New York. He has served as Executive Editor for Art in America magazine, as contributing editor to The Village Voice, as Staff Songwriter for Glaser Publications in Nashville and as Arts Editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In 1994, he received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.[1] In 2003, he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Friends of the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries.

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dave Hickey’s fictional short stories in this book are far more entertaining than the drawings which accompany them. I wish this was just a normal book of stories rather than a picture book.