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The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty
The Invisible Dragon made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty—and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniting a debate that has shown no sign of flagging.
With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back to fan the flames. More manifesto than polite discussion, more call to action than criticism, The Invisible Dragon aims squarely at the hyper-institutionalism that, in Hickey’s view, denies the real pleasures that draw us to art in the first place. Deploying the artworks of Warhol, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mapplethorpe and the writings of Ruskin, Shakespeare, Deleuze, and Foucault, Hickey takes on museum culture, arid academicism, sclerotic politics, and more—all in the service of making readers rethink the nature of art. A new introduction provides a context for earlier essays—what Hickey calls his "intellectual temper tantrums." A new essay, "American Beauty," concludes the volume with a historical argument that is a rousing paean to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty.
Written with a verve that is all too rare in serious criticism, this expanded and refurbished edition of The Invisible Dragon will be sure to captivate a new generation of readers, provoking the passionate reactions that are the hallmark of great criticism.
With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back to fan the flames. More manifesto than polite discussion, more call to action than criticism, The Invisible Dragon aims squarely at the hyper-institutionalism that, in Hickey’s view, denies the real pleasures that draw us to art in the first place. Deploying the artworks of Warhol, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mapplethorpe and the writings of Ruskin, Shakespeare, Deleuze, and Foucault, Hickey takes on museum culture, arid academicism, sclerotic politics, and more—all in the service of making readers rethink the nature of art. A new introduction provides a context for earlier essays—what Hickey calls his "intellectual temper tantrums." A new essay, "American Beauty," concludes the volume with a historical argument that is a rousing paean to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty.
Written with a verve that is all too rare in serious criticism, this expanded and refurbished edition of The Invisible Dragon will be sure to captivate a new generation of readers, provoking the passionate reactions that are the hallmark of great criticism.
64 pages, Paperback
First published December 2, 1993
49 people are currently reading
1261 people want to read
About the author
Dave Hickey
137 books75 followersDavid 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
February 28, 2010
I studied with Hickey years ago and it was fantastic. The man is erudite and quick and always ready with a quip or bon mot. When I was his student, his The Invisible Dragon was kicking the shit out of the art world, bellowing that discussing the virtue of an artwork is worthless unless that art work is loved by a constituency.
(For example, the virtue of John Smith's virtuous novel about loving people is irrelevant IF no one likes reading John Smith. For example, a pile of leaves in a gallery that is supposedly about racial equality is invisible, culturally, until a group of people start loving that pile of leaves enough to argue for it.)
In Hickey's parlance, that love and excitement engendered by objects or events is beauty. Or that was implied. What was argued was that without beauty there's no reason to talk about the art work. What was argued was that Robert Mapplethorpe made beautiful objects and definitely made beautiful art AND Jesse Helms was right to take offense - those photos were intended to create offense for anyone who did not share Mapplethorpe's values. What was argued was that beauty had been "feminized" and (due to an all too common causal argument) demonized.
Anyway, the implied argument was the point. Love and excitement engendered by seeing a surprising thing is beauty. And it has profound impact on cultures. As for Hickey's impact, he wanted less neo-minimalism and neo-conceptualism (which had and has ruled the art world for the last thirty years) and a move toward surprisingly new, beautiful, and intelligent art. He didn't want the crass stupidity of the market, nor the dead paternalism of the institutional world; he wanted an art world that walked the fine line between the two: art that was beautiful and brilliant (and beauty, again, for Hickey means "something experienced that gives pleasure from breaking expectations"). What Hickey got was the rise of an art world dominated by speculation and the rise of dumb pretty art.
So Hickey let The Invisible Dragon fall out of print. Until now.
Now he makes the implicit argument explicit. He includes a new essay about how beauty works. The new essay is longer than the old book. The new essay is called "American Beauty." I only partially agree with it, since one of his arguments is no longer about beauty, but about how beauty works in democracies; particularly our democracy in the U.S. His claim is that beauty forms new constituencies around itself. That makes sense. Think about the way hip hop spread, or Tarantino, or Cindy Sherman, or anything that YOU passionately LOVE. But what he also claims is that democracies allow for a faster spread of these constituencies of beauty. That also makes some sense. The Taliban, for example, aren't that interested in idolatry.
And that's what Hickey is really talking about: idolatry. Paganism. His claim is that the U.S. is secretly pagan. But I think he's wrong. I think that the cosmopolitan areas are explicitly pagan. New York City definitely is. Paris was at the turn of the century, as was London before it. In a decade Shanghai might become an even more cosmopolitan and pagan city. But idolatry and paganism cluster in cities. Or at least that's what this former small town kid has seen. It's not a particularly American thing, but a cosmopolitan thing, and we will continue to have it as long as we remain idolatrous and pagan; as long as we remain cosmopolitan, which I think we're losing.
(For example, the virtue of John Smith's virtuous novel about loving people is irrelevant IF no one likes reading John Smith. For example, a pile of leaves in a gallery that is supposedly about racial equality is invisible, culturally, until a group of people start loving that pile of leaves enough to argue for it.)
In Hickey's parlance, that love and excitement engendered by objects or events is beauty. Or that was implied. What was argued was that without beauty there's no reason to talk about the art work. What was argued was that Robert Mapplethorpe made beautiful objects and definitely made beautiful art AND Jesse Helms was right to take offense - those photos were intended to create offense for anyone who did not share Mapplethorpe's values. What was argued was that beauty had been "feminized" and (due to an all too common causal argument) demonized.
Anyway, the implied argument was the point. Love and excitement engendered by seeing a surprising thing is beauty. And it has profound impact on cultures. As for Hickey's impact, he wanted less neo-minimalism and neo-conceptualism (which had and has ruled the art world for the last thirty years) and a move toward surprisingly new, beautiful, and intelligent art. He didn't want the crass stupidity of the market, nor the dead paternalism of the institutional world; he wanted an art world that walked the fine line between the two: art that was beautiful and brilliant (and beauty, again, for Hickey means "something experienced that gives pleasure from breaking expectations"). What Hickey got was the rise of an art world dominated by speculation and the rise of dumb pretty art.
So Hickey let The Invisible Dragon fall out of print. Until now.
Now he makes the implicit argument explicit. He includes a new essay about how beauty works. The new essay is longer than the old book. The new essay is called "American Beauty." I only partially agree with it, since one of his arguments is no longer about beauty, but about how beauty works in democracies; particularly our democracy in the U.S. His claim is that beauty forms new constituencies around itself. That makes sense. Think about the way hip hop spread, or Tarantino, or Cindy Sherman, or anything that YOU passionately LOVE. But what he also claims is that democracies allow for a faster spread of these constituencies of beauty. That also makes some sense. The Taliban, for example, aren't that interested in idolatry.
And that's what Hickey is really talking about: idolatry. Paganism. His claim is that the U.S. is secretly pagan. But I think he's wrong. I think that the cosmopolitan areas are explicitly pagan. New York City definitely is. Paris was at the turn of the century, as was London before it. In a decade Shanghai might become an even more cosmopolitan and pagan city. But idolatry and paganism cluster in cities. Or at least that's what this former small town kid has seen. It's not a particularly American thing, but a cosmopolitan thing, and we will continue to have it as long as we remain idolatrous and pagan; as long as we remain cosmopolitan, which I think we're losing.
July 31, 2012
A reconsideration of beauty, written with a sense of humor and an astute comprehension of culture and history. Reading this essay felt like a cool glass of water, refreshing and made me see the power of beauty in a new way.
Read
January 14, 2026not to be a huge bitch but there's about one good essay in here
November 17, 2021
It’s so cute when Pagans try to talk about beauty
November 10, 2009
This is a smart book about the nature of beauty and desire and the role of parental organizations in contemporary society.
Hickey's basic premise is that beauty is the agency of visual pleasure. This notion puts Hickey in opposition with a lot of art criticism which is largely concerned with how art is "good for you." Most theorists and scholars are primarily interested in what the art is "saying" -- i.e., interested in art's virtue and ethics but not with its efficacy.
Hickey, however, argues that it doesn't matter what the "text" is saying if we don't take into account its efficacy with any particular viewer.
For example, we don't analyze a movie unless we like it. I still don't know if Pulp Fiction, The Silence, or His Girl Friday are good for me, but because I like them, I constantly think about them, and because I constantly think about them, I ponder their possible social virtues and individual psychological and ethical effects.
Basically, Hickey argues that any work's efficacy is as important (if not more so) than its ethical virtue (i.e., whether or not its good for you).
Hickey explores the reasons why "is it good for you?" replaced "do I like it?" and deals with the modern roles of institutions (with nods to Foucault and J. Jacobs) in relation to regulating desire. Hickey's a wonderful writer. The prose is fast, vivid and jocose. Worthwhile for anyone interested in art or beauty.
Hickey's basic premise is that beauty is the agency of visual pleasure. This notion puts Hickey in opposition with a lot of art criticism which is largely concerned with how art is "good for you." Most theorists and scholars are primarily interested in what the art is "saying" -- i.e., interested in art's virtue and ethics but not with its efficacy.
Hickey, however, argues that it doesn't matter what the "text" is saying if we don't take into account its efficacy with any particular viewer.
For example, we don't analyze a movie unless we like it. I still don't know if Pulp Fiction, The Silence, or His Girl Friday are good for me, but because I like them, I constantly think about them, and because I constantly think about them, I ponder their possible social virtues and individual psychological and ethical effects.
Basically, Hickey argues that any work's efficacy is as important (if not more so) than its ethical virtue (i.e., whether or not its good for you).
Hickey explores the reasons why "is it good for you?" replaced "do I like it?" and deals with the modern roles of institutions (with nods to Foucault and J. Jacobs) in relation to regulating desire. Hickey's a wonderful writer. The prose is fast, vivid and jocose. Worthwhile for anyone interested in art or beauty.
October 7, 2009
As Air Guitar is one of my favorite pieces of criticism, I approached the prospect of reading more of Hickey’s work with enthusiasm bordering on mania. However, while The Invisible Dragon shows Hickeys humor and insight to be as strong as ever, it reads, in some respects, as humorously outdated. With the exception of one piece, the book is primarily a re-print of essays published over 15 years ago – and, as Hickey himself points out in the introduction, they are all concerned with fighting a battle that was mostly won a decade ago.
Indeed, the essays are primarily structured as a defense of beauty – written at a time when beauty in artwork was a much-maligned phenomenon. It’s indicative that impetus to write the book rose from a desire to defend Mapplethorpe (around the time that the NEA was under attack for having supported his work) – an artist now so canonized that the idea of his needing a defense borders on absurd. Nonetheless, despite the datedness of the politics, Hickey persuasively argues that beauty in artwork can be a powerful agent for social change. Indeed, the only way new ideas can be tolerated, as he sees it, is if the viewer is initially anesthetized by the beauty – it makes the harsh newness easier to swallow. As is often the case with Hickey’s work, I continue to struggle with to what extent I swallow Hickey’s argument – but his ideas stay with me long after I’ve put down the book.
Indeed, the essays are primarily structured as a defense of beauty – written at a time when beauty in artwork was a much-maligned phenomenon. It’s indicative that impetus to write the book rose from a desire to defend Mapplethorpe (around the time that the NEA was under attack for having supported his work) – an artist now so canonized that the idea of his needing a defense borders on absurd. Nonetheless, despite the datedness of the politics, Hickey persuasively argues that beauty in artwork can be a powerful agent for social change. Indeed, the only way new ideas can be tolerated, as he sees it, is if the viewer is initially anesthetized by the beauty – it makes the harsh newness easier to swallow. As is often the case with Hickey’s work, I continue to struggle with to what extent I swallow Hickey’s argument – but his ideas stay with me long after I’ve put down the book.
January 1, 2016
This playful little collection supposedly invoked the ire of the art establishment. I found it pretty pretty tame, except he comes down on the museums and curators for pandering to the marketeers or being in collusion, he's not really sure. His vocabulary is interesting and the writing unique.
A well written and provocative read. If you are a person who thinks about art you will definitely like this book.
A well written and provocative read. If you are a person who thinks about art you will definitely like this book.
August 19, 2010
I had never seen of heard of most of the art that Hickey references in this book, but he makes very valid points about the state of art in America today that I agree w/ & can understand, as well as how we should interact/react to art.
Art is not untouched by the pitfalls of sexist, racist, classicist bullshit that plagues American society/culture. Hickey looks to beauty as a means to entering art & as relief to "art" being ruined by the galleries & academia, & to modern/postmodern notions that beauty doesn't matter.
At times he gets too caught up in his thoughts, and reiterates the same fact he stated in the previous sentence/paragraph in the following using even bigger words than the bigger words he used before that. Confused? Exactly.
Art is not untouched by the pitfalls of sexist, racist, classicist bullshit that plagues American society/culture. Hickey looks to beauty as a means to entering art & as relief to "art" being ruined by the galleries & academia, & to modern/postmodern notions that beauty doesn't matter.
At times he gets too caught up in his thoughts, and reiterates the same fact he stated in the previous sentence/paragraph in the following using even bigger words than the bigger words he used before that. Confused? Exactly.
May 31, 2008
This is my favourite book. Period. All of human behaviour is described in these pages.
Plus, we learn that Art is not necessarily good for you; that the well-being benifits of Art is a Myth cooked up by Institutions of the Pharmacological Arts, like the LACMA and the Getty, et al...
Plus, we learn that Art is not necessarily good for you; that the well-being benifits of Art is a Myth cooked up by Institutions of the Pharmacological Arts, like the LACMA and the Getty, et al...
Read
June 24, 2009This book is a slow read. Mainly because just about every two pages Hickey drops some idea on you that makes you want to stop reading, take a walk and ponder. Or maybe I am a slow read. I love it!
beauty-experiment-reads
October 26, 2012A shocking call for art to be, well, good to look at.
March 24, 2014
i dont have the IQ to follow this
November 1, 2021
I liked the points this dude was making but oh my god is he insufferably pretentious. You want to punch him and tell him you agree with his perspective at the same time.
Read
September 1, 2019I'm not rating this, mostly because it wouldn't be fair as I was expecting this to pull me out of my disconnect to art lately and inspire me to go to museums again. But instead I noticed it was a little over my head and I wasn't motivated to invest the time and look up all the words I didn't know and pictures he mentions to really understand the text.
In the end this may be great but I wouldn't know as I was in the wrong place to see it.
In the end this may be great but I wouldn't know as I was in the wrong place to see it.
December 29, 2023
It’s a weird world we’re in, in that advocating for the importance of spotlighting Beauty in the approach and appreciation of the Arts is considered extremely provocative and controversial. Well worth reading, though I admit I had some difficulty reading his dense prose.
January 16, 2019
Fun, but I think mostly repeating what Susan Sontag write about 20 years earlier in “Against Interpretation”. Just updated with new examples, eg Robert Mappelthorpe
December 12, 2021
One star for using kvetching in a sentence.
June 29, 2024
Transformative writing about the arts. Beautiful, funny, intuitive.
August 9, 2025
The value here is in many of the pieces, galleries, and movements referenced but there are some solid thoughts on the difference between beauty and the beautiful. A great example of the fact that something doesn’t have to be good to be useful.
That being said, the whole time I couldn’t tell if he wrote this drunk or not. Sometimes this reads clear-eyed and poignant and at other times it reads like the garbled thoughts of a wine drunk art douche.
That being said, the whole time I couldn’t tell if he wrote this drunk or not. Sometimes this reads clear-eyed and poignant and at other times it reads like the garbled thoughts of a wine drunk art douche.
December 20, 2013
I finally found a free morning to finish this, and I'm happy that I did, even though I found it frustrating and, in large parts, wrong. Hickey argues for the promotion of "beauty" over rhetorical or what he terms "designative" accounts of art. So, out with academics, and in with what he terms in the book's concluding pages a "pagan" appreciation of art. No-one should have to encounter something that sounds like Camille Paglia before noon, I feel; but moreoever I found this book fascinating, but centered on something that was ultimately hollow, in this description of the pagan experience of beauty.
Of course, that's also sort of the point of the book: that there's something beyond description that, finally, exists in the appreciation of art, and that we need to promote that. (In grad-school speak, I would describe this as operationalizing an aporia--in English, I would call this weaponizing the idea of an experience beyond what words can describe.) So this is the book's central premise, and I just don't believe it. In my own, admittedly academic, admittedly un-Pagan experience, I tend to find the experience of beautiful things heightened--rather than diminished or dispelled--by the sorts of rhetorical and, yes, academic accounts of artworks that Hickey dislikes.
So, then, why five stars? Beyond just being intriguingly frustrating, I think Hickey is very good at pointing out real problems in the academic accounts of things. A colleague recently gave a paper on how the way academics account for why we read literature--generally giving historicized or formalist accounts--isn't why most people, or even we, read literature. (It is the rare duck indeed who, outside of office hours, goes "I would like to read something that is historically representative qua historically representative. Bring me the most representative piece of Italian art you can find," or whatnot.) But then knowing the representative features of art--if you don't buy the binary that Hickey is pushing--can help you appreciate, yes, the beauty of the canon of art it's representative of. I'm teaching the Republic right now, and I feel Hickey is performing what Socrates gets accused of: endlessly refuting others' ideas, but not putting forward a positive conception himself. I feel about this the way that I feel about books telling me that great books are great: yep, totally. Now what? Worshipping greatness abstracted from any great thing--and I would argue from the details, techniques, and maybe even historical contexts that inform those details and techniques--is hollow and boring, in my admittedly not humble opinion.
If I'm reading this right, Hickey sees the rhetoric of beauty and beauty itself as a sort of binary. I think that they're a braid, which, if made correctly, is mutually reinforcing. But this book is so engaging, well-written, and frustrating that I like it immensely even while thinking it's basically wrong.
Of course, that's also sort of the point of the book: that there's something beyond description that, finally, exists in the appreciation of art, and that we need to promote that. (In grad-school speak, I would describe this as operationalizing an aporia--in English, I would call this weaponizing the idea of an experience beyond what words can describe.) So this is the book's central premise, and I just don't believe it. In my own, admittedly academic, admittedly un-Pagan experience, I tend to find the experience of beautiful things heightened--rather than diminished or dispelled--by the sorts of rhetorical and, yes, academic accounts of artworks that Hickey dislikes.
So, then, why five stars? Beyond just being intriguingly frustrating, I think Hickey is very good at pointing out real problems in the academic accounts of things. A colleague recently gave a paper on how the way academics account for why we read literature--generally giving historicized or formalist accounts--isn't why most people, or even we, read literature. (It is the rare duck indeed who, outside of office hours, goes "I would like to read something that is historically representative qua historically representative. Bring me the most representative piece of Italian art you can find," or whatnot.) But then knowing the representative features of art--if you don't buy the binary that Hickey is pushing--can help you appreciate, yes, the beauty of the canon of art it's representative of. I'm teaching the Republic right now, and I feel Hickey is performing what Socrates gets accused of: endlessly refuting others' ideas, but not putting forward a positive conception himself. I feel about this the way that I feel about books telling me that great books are great: yep, totally. Now what? Worshipping greatness abstracted from any great thing--and I would argue from the details, techniques, and maybe even historical contexts that inform those details and techniques--is hollow and boring, in my admittedly not humble opinion.
If I'm reading this right, Hickey sees the rhetoric of beauty and beauty itself as a sort of binary. I think that they're a braid, which, if made correctly, is mutually reinforcing. But this book is so engaging, well-written, and frustrating that I like it immensely even while thinking it's basically wrong.
November 15, 2009
From my column in The Brooklyn Rail:
Transgression and transformation…glamour and authority…both barrels blaze from spitfire art critic and theoretician Dave Hickey. Several searing, essential essays (with a generous foreword) deliberate upon the relationships between the beholder and the beheld.
Beauty is a seditious virtue, difficult and dangerous. Faced with this “threat,” civilization imposes a custodian. But this buffer poses problems and Hickey storms the gate.
The ménage à trois between artist, object, and audience creates a sacred trust. Who can present the art without diminishing the primacy of that very personal relationship? Hickey penetratingly separates the sheep from the goats, the market from “the temple of art” (that, he says, doesn’t exist). “Do we trade the control of the aristocrat’s taste for the neutralizing bureaucrat,” making museums mausoleums and “cultural junkyards”?
Stylistically, Hickey deftly mixes his diction, stirring up a fine-tuned rumble—an orchestra of outlaw biker philosophers where Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida bump into Jagger, Mapplethorpe, and Warhol. Historical anecdotes, specifically about Caravaggio, provide deep insights into the locus of art, commerce, and theory.
In the wars of rhetoric, the Jesse Helms’ of the world recognize images that challenge the status quo. Hickey bathes the subject in acid to slough off the dross. He convincingly argues for beauty that validates the marginal and results in “multi-valent moments of self recognition.” He champions art that “derives its authority from a consortium of beholders” and not from a panel of curators. His “rock n’ roll heart” is an invaluable crie de couer in a de-fanged landscape of cultural hegemony.
Transgression and transformation…glamour and authority…both barrels blaze from spitfire art critic and theoretician Dave Hickey. Several searing, essential essays (with a generous foreword) deliberate upon the relationships between the beholder and the beheld.
Beauty is a seditious virtue, difficult and dangerous. Faced with this “threat,” civilization imposes a custodian. But this buffer poses problems and Hickey storms the gate.
The ménage à trois between artist, object, and audience creates a sacred trust. Who can present the art without diminishing the primacy of that very personal relationship? Hickey penetratingly separates the sheep from the goats, the market from “the temple of art” (that, he says, doesn’t exist). “Do we trade the control of the aristocrat’s taste for the neutralizing bureaucrat,” making museums mausoleums and “cultural junkyards”?
Stylistically, Hickey deftly mixes his diction, stirring up a fine-tuned rumble—an orchestra of outlaw biker philosophers where Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida bump into Jagger, Mapplethorpe, and Warhol. Historical anecdotes, specifically about Caravaggio, provide deep insights into the locus of art, commerce, and theory.
In the wars of rhetoric, the Jesse Helms’ of the world recognize images that challenge the status quo. Hickey bathes the subject in acid to slough off the dross. He convincingly argues for beauty that validates the marginal and results in “multi-valent moments of self recognition.” He champions art that “derives its authority from a consortium of beholders” and not from a panel of curators. His “rock n’ roll heart” is an invaluable crie de couer in a de-fanged landscape of cultural hegemony.
November 4, 2013
The Invisible Dragon outlines Hickey's take on beauty, which he defines as "the pleasure we take in something that transcends the appropriate." Hickey is vehemently anti-institution, at one point comparing Barr, the founder of MOMA to Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda - both seek to control art. Barr thinks "art can be good for us," but doesn't trust it in the hands and minds of the free market. Hickey sets up a dichotomy of government vs society, institution vs contract: institutions are sadist, deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, the pleasure of power, determining what art is important and implementing 'correct' interpretations, while society's relationship with art should be more like a contract: durational, conditional, and ensuring we play an active role in determining the beautiful. Instead of this determination of an art work's efficacy though comparison and competition, we should feel empowered to bring our own interpretation. Since I "like" things that are like me, or show me to myself, I scour the world for those "likenesses," and this is natural, and should not be taken out of the interpretation of art. Hickey compares each individual's taste in beauty and art to singing "America The Beautiful" in his elementary school class. The students made up their own words, their own set of things they thought were beautiful, but still sang along to the same melody.
August 4, 2011
Hickey is an unparalleled chronicler of America's relationship to art, and in this expanded edition of The Invisible Dragon he argues stringently against institutionalization and in favor of the "art market." Pieces of art, he argues, have value because of the beauty perceived by the beholder, not because some bureaucrat has used it to justify their employment. If it doesn't sell, Hickey argues, it has no reason to exist.
Rarely will you find an art critic attacking the museum system, but Hickey isn't your typical art critic. Informed (and inflamed) in equal parts by Michel Foucault and Thomas Jefferson, he writes eloquently yet logically about the relationship between good art and democracy, teasing out the real meaning of the controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe's "X Portfolio" in it's relationship to beauty and provocation. In short, there is value and virtue in beauty, and we're remiss to overlook it's importance to our mercantile democracy.
Certainly a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the power and politics of art in America.
Rarely will you find an art critic attacking the museum system, but Hickey isn't your typical art critic. Informed (and inflamed) in equal parts by Michel Foucault and Thomas Jefferson, he writes eloquently yet logically about the relationship between good art and democracy, teasing out the real meaning of the controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe's "X Portfolio" in it's relationship to beauty and provocation. In short, there is value and virtue in beauty, and we're remiss to overlook it's importance to our mercantile democracy.
Certainly a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the power and politics of art in America.
September 2, 2007
Way back in my NYU days I took a lot of classes on art... this book is one of the few that I kept. Dave Hickey rolls Mapplethorpe and Caravaggio up into an argument about the democratic nature of art and beauty and the role that institutions play in (unnecessarily?) regulating our desire for beauty. Definitely had to pull out the dictionary several times - Hickey's vocabulary (or thesaurus skillz) are astonishing - but I found the essays to be extraordinarily thought-provoking. Not that I was always in agreement, mind you. But definitely provoked.
July 31, 2008
I had to read these essays a couple times. Hickey would probably claim that it is because Beauty is absent from current art criticism. If his book wasn't so hard to get a hold of, I would say there is no reason for anyone interested in Aesthetics to have not read The Invisible Dragon. It is erudite, compelling, and short.
The best review I can give this book is that I have gained insight into the way one approaches a work of art. And while Hickey will never convince me to reject Picasso, he has influenced my artistic experience.
The best review I can give this book is that I have gained insight into the way one approaches a work of art. And while Hickey will never convince me to reject Picasso, he has influenced my artistic experience.
July 17, 2012
I'd like to see the 2009 updated intro and additional concluding thoughts of Dave Hickey's essays here. Without this book, I would never have put Caravaggio and Maplethorpe side by side... would not have re-read Shakespeare's sonnet 147 and 24... and would never have known about Edward Ruscha. Peter Schjeldahl on the back refers to Hickey's "shocking intelligence", which is well put. What is the "vernacular of beauty"? and how does the market, advertising, the art museum enter into the picture? If you have not yet pondered the function of beauty, Hickey will get you started.
June 22, 2007
Maybe the caravaggio/maplethorpe thing is a bit much, but I still thing for this book which is maybe as much about the writing as it is about the copy that once passed over my desk when I worked at Powell's. It was an ex-libris from the Harvard library and someone had gone a little nutso with the big HARVARD stamp—front, back, inside, outside—and, best of all, big and red straight across Helmut's butt (or is it Helmut's fist?) on the reproduction of Maplethorpe's "Helmut and Brooks."
May 15, 2007
Published before Air Guitar and near impossible to find, these four essays on beauty are more esoteric and academic than Hickey's later writings. In a way, they're also more enjoyable. These essays are not spectacles so much as they are very adroit observations. Before you condemn Hickey for Air Guitar, put your nose between these pages.
November 9, 2010
So good! I feel like I've been waiting to read this and had no idea. Dave Hickey speaks in such a straightforward way, cutting through centuries of academic bullshit to make a very persuasive argument. His ideas on contemporary art inspired so many "YES, YES, EXACTLY!" moments - and a whole lotta dog-eared pages
April 9, 2022
"Today we are content to slither through the flatland of Baudelairian modernity, trapped like cocker spaniels in the eternal, positive presentness of a terrain so visually impoverished that we cannot even lie to any effect in its language of images – nor imagine with any authority – nor even remember."
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