Robert Gober: Dia Center for the Arts, September 24-1992-June 20, 1993

by Dave Hickey

With wit and insight, critic Hickey walks us through Gober's disturbing site-specific installation at Dia.

64 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 1993

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

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book and read Hickey's introduction just before a trip from vermont to philadelpia to go to the Philly museum of art and see the duchamp colection, specifically etant donnes. Hickey starts the essay by talking about his journey from vegas to NY to see this exhibit and being seated in the airport next to Don King (or was it a look-alike?) and begins his description of the installation with noting the four hours spent immersed in Gober's realm. It inspired me to spend as much time looking at Etant Donnes as it took me to get there to see it, which I didn't manage, but I still use as a good benchmark for art: good art should talk as long to look at as it took you to get there to see it.

I'm actually not the biggest Hickey fan, but this was the first piece I read by him and I still love it.