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Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 974 ratings · 103 reviews

"Air Guitar" is Dave Hickey's "memoir without tears"--a journey through the vernacular cultural landscape of the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back from the vantage-point of his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, Hickey speculates on everything from jazz and rock-and-roll to basketball and professional wrestling--from magic and psyc...more

Paperback, 208 pages

Published August 2nd 1997 by Art Issues Press

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Jul 29, 2008 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

The 2008 Carnegie International’s curatorial theme was inspired by David Bowie’s song, Life on Mars. While I’m a huge fan of Bowie (and his turquoise suit and eye shadow in the 1973 video by Mick Rock), I was mildly skeptical when the Carnegie’s head curator, Douglas Fogle, decided to use this song as a point of thematic departure for what was supposed to be a significant survey of contemporary art. On further contemplation, I had to give points to Fogle for his brazen ability to harness Bowie’s...more The 2008 Carnegie International’s curatorial theme was inspired by David Bowie’s song, Life on Mars. While I’m a huge fan of Bowie (and his turquoise suit and eye shadow in the 1973 video by Mick Rock), I was mildly skeptical when the Carnegie’s head curator, Douglas Fogle, decided to use this song as a point of thematic departure for what was supposed to be a significant survey of contemporary art. On further contemplation, I had to give points to Fogle for his brazen ability to harness Bowie’s optimistic confusion and even saw how the expanse of Bowie’s repertoire could fuel years of curatorial inspiration. Visual art is dangerously close to a point where it may be viewed as largely elitist and self-referential and pulling it back into the realm of rock stars’ musings can only be a good thing. It’s not banal, it’s genuine and unpretentious and I feel that David Hickey would wholeheartedly agree.

It’s this genuine and unpretentious outlook on art which is so appealing in Air Guitar, Hickey’s seminal text on contemporary art and culture. Hickey took the shopworn dialog about blurring the distinction between high and low art to a magnificent new level in this work. Infused with optimism and wit, Air Guitar takes an honest and insightful look at the dependency of fine arts on popular culture. Unlike Chuck Klosterman who seems to drop cultural references for the sake of dropping them, Hickey manages to use references to create a connect-the-dots map of a democratic art world. He manages to create a no-nonsense picture of art in America without cheapening it, using things such as a German semi-automatic pistol, Tom and Jerry, and the American automobile as devices to segue into truly delightful dialogs about commerce and representation. Throughout, Hickey’s tone drips with non-ironic optimism, a rarity to find in any text about contemporary art and culture.

And, oh my, the end papers in the 1997 edition I’m reading are embossed with a floral design. What can I say -- I’m a sucker for expensive flairs hidden a modest trade paperback. It’s like a detail found in a teenage girl’s diary and is in keeping with the exuberance of the text within.
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Mar 02, 2008 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was first introduced to Dave Hickey through one of my painting classes - my professor, who was found of giving supplementary readings, handed out a xeroxed chapter from this book. I hated it. I found Hickey to be smarmy and reactionary, and I disagreed with almost everything he wrote.

A few months ago, however, I was reading a symposium in Art in America about the state of MFA programs. Hickey was one of the contributors, and much to my surprise, the most compelling. I still disagreed with him...more I was first introduced to Dave Hickey through one of my painting classes - my professor, who was found of giving supplementary readings, handed out a xeroxed chapter from this book. I hated it. I found Hickey to be smarmy and reactionary, and I disagreed with almost everything he wrote.

A few months ago, however, I was reading a symposium in Art in America about the state of MFA programs. Hickey was one of the contributors, and much to my surprise, the most compelling. I still disagreed with him on many, if not all, of his points - he argues, for example, that a school attempting to shield its students from the art market is only doing a disservice to its students in the long run. Yet I found myself coming back to his piece several times - I enjoyed disagreeing with him more interesting and thought-provoking than nodding in complacence with some article I agreed with. Determined to give Air Guitar a second chance, I picked up a copy the next time I saw it in stores.

Hickey remains a reactionary, but he's not a reactionary who wants to go back to the good ol' days of a simpler life. Rather, he longs for a time of rebellion - Hickey values Democracy as the highest possible value, and thinks that the best parts of human life flourish in the near anarchy of complete freedom. This is a far cry from someone like Tom Wolfe, who has simply ossified; his writings barely-shrouded complaints against "the kids these days" - generally as wrong as they are offensive.

One of the strengths of Hickey's writing is that he makes no attempt to separate his artistic and cultural criticism from the autobiography in which they were formed. His views on the art market, for example, flow from his early involvement with hot-rodding cars - a group of DIYers using individual expressions as a way of subverting the hegemony of Detroit and the auto industry. Though one may not agree with his ultimate conclusions, they are such a logical outgrowth of his personal experiences that it's hard not to stop, and for one brief second, re-evaluate one's own position. (less)

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Jun 22, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Here's what's great - it's theory without being getting caught up in the jargon and allusion of theory that requires you to be an expert before you even begin. And hell it's theory that speaks to concrete ideas and objects and people. Funny, smart and erudite without being shitty. There's enough going on here that you can read entirely different things than I did - I saw mostly cultural critique than art, and I've heard others talk about the optimism and perscription for the art world that I did...more Here's what's great - it's theory without being getting caught up in the jargon and allusion of theory that requires you to be an expert before you even begin. And hell it's theory that speaks to concrete ideas and objects and people. Funny, smart and erudite without being shitty. There's enough going on here that you can read entirely different things than I did - I saw mostly cultural critique than art, and I've heard others talk about the optimism and perscription for the art world that I didn't see. I can also imagine someone more involved in jazz or music to find that to be Hickey's main thrust. I'm also touched by Hickey's modesty - his name dropping isn't name dropping, and his descriptions of the incredible things he's done don't feel patronizing or bragging.

But when he gets out of the concrete examples, I get a bit confused. Hickey's primary concerns are democracy (everything from the democratization of art to the democracy that must exist in jazz) and sincerity, and I don't know what the hell he means by either of those words. I'll bet someone else does, and I'd be happy to hear it, but let me point out my confusion and maybe you (yeah you, who's reading this with that raised eyebrow and coif) can see why I'm asking what I'm asking.

Democracy - I guess what he's saying here is that art requires involvement from everyone (as opposed to his Looky-loos) and must be 'of the people' instead of 'for the people.' Fantastic, but hard to really understand from many of his essays.

Sincerity - I have no idea. Liberace is sincere? even though he was 'an open secret,' which is still a secret? A sunset has a false sincerity, and neon lights have a sincere falseness?

I guess what I'm saying is it would've been nice for him to include an essay defining these terms, because they're confusing and they seem like such linchpins throughout the rest of his arguments, and I just straight up don't get it.

(I won't add on to the complaints that he is now part of the institution that he seems to oppose or that he talks about his upbringing as being part of a secret, neither of which were very democratic, other than to say I noticed them and it added to my confusion of what democracy meant in his context)(less)

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Mar 19, 2008 Lunnon rated it 3 of 5 stars

It has its moments-Dave Hickey is an art critic who teaches at UNLV, which frees him to write long essays on Siegfried and Roy and Perry Mason as well as Renaissance painting, often linking the two. I got sick of the constant references to the Sixties, but that's just because I hate hearing about the Sixties in general. And some of the linkages seem to be a bit of a stretch. And he seems to be a bit in love with himself. But for an art critic, he is very readable and I did find myself underlinin...more

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Feb 22, 2010 Derek rated it 3 of 5 stars

Air Guitar reminds me of Hank Stuever’s Off-Ramp, a book that, like this one, examines and sometimes celebrates the marginalia of American culture. Like Stuever, Hickey revels in the edges, the fringes, the peripheries of what many consider normal; he inhabits the places few people attend. Sometimes he physically lurks in social places – “in record stores, honky tonks, art bars, hot-rod shops, surf shops, editorial offices, discos, and song factories” – until he finds something familiar in a par...more Air Guitar reminds me of Hank Stuever’s Off-Ramp, a book that, like this one, examines and sometimes celebrates the marginalia of American culture. Like Stuever, Hickey revels in the edges, the fringes, the peripheries of what many consider normal; he inhabits the places few people attend. Sometimes he physically lurks in social places – “in record stores, honky tonks, art bars, hot-rod shops, surf shops, editorial offices, discos, and song factories” – until he finds something familiar in a particular environment; other times he strives to unearth something new from utterly familiar terrain (11). He will convince with textual evidence, for example, that Normal Rockwell is a guardian of American diversity and not a preserver of the status quo, that most of Rockwell’s pictures convey the moral, “Hey! People are different, Get used to it” (39, 40). With the vocabulary of a college professor (which he is, though one wouldn’t guess it the way he hates on academia) he writes with sincerity about Pez dispensers, fake pearls, female wrestlers, Family Feud, the DeVry Institute of Technology, Gene Simmons, Donahue, Blind Lemon, Roseanne, and Baby Face (13).

“I have never taken anything printed in a book to heart,” Hickey asserts, “that was not somehow confirmed in my ordinary experience – and that did not, to some extent, reform and redeem that experience” (10), experience Hickey does not lack. Yes, he worked as an art dealer for sometime, but he and his wife served champagne in plastic glasses at the shows and tried to sell “art that might flourish in the crazy zone between the priests of institutional virtue and the bottom-feeders of commercial predation” (106). While such intentionality behind one’s lack of pretension can be pretentious itself and made Hickey’s lofty-ideas-in-ordinary-things shtick a tad wearisome by the end – as if he kept making sure his carefully tousled hair was messy enough for us – there were a couple of things that kept me believing in his mission, the foremost of which is the shrewd fact that a majority of the authors I have read or encountered during this program (starting with Debbie Blue’s sermons in Santa Fe and extending to Denise Levertov’s poems in the bathtub yesterday) have exemplified and/or explicitly advocated for some version of the value-the-ordinary philosophy.

It helps that Hickey walks his talk. According to his calculations, he has spent “roughly three times as many hours in front of old Perry Mason episodes as I have spent listening to Mozart and reading Shakespeare combined” (138), and while he knows it would alienate his readers to brag about this, he doesn’t hesitate to affirm that the people and programs we find trivial, like Perry Mason, may upon examination be repositories of great cultural value. As it turns out, Perry Mason’s staff on the show acts like a great rock band, which is to say it successfully reconstitutes “the ideal of the American family” (141).

Hickey is nowhere more successful in finding diamonds in the detritus than when he writes about Las Vegas, his home. He loves the “feral glamour” of a neon landscape where “there is everything to see and not a single pretentious object demanding to be scrutinized” (23). He loves the people who work in “food” but aspire to “cocktail” and maybe, someday, “magician.” He interviews Siegfried and Roy, loves Liberace (who in his concerts would play Chopin one minute and “Home on the Range” the next) and really, the whole town and everyone in it. For him, Vegas is “the petri dish of the desert… the last refuge of unsanctioned risk and spectacle” and it “tells the truth in ways that violate the canons and conventions of our culture’s high and low with equal impunity” (175).

Throughout the essays, Hickey’s language reflects his ideology. Interested in the in-between, he makes comparisons between two words or concepts or points of reference we know and places his subject in the middle as an unseen third option. Aside from his repeated (and gradually annoying) use of “quotidian” (13, 37, 164) and strains on the word “theatre” (theatricalize, theatricality), it works. The language reflects the themes and characters of the book and Hickey works hard to legitimize their place in the cultural conversation. (less)

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Feb 15, 2011 Gladia rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’m not even sure how I ended up reading this collection of essays by Dave Hickey but it was a good, sort of random encounter. But let me first set things straight, Air Guitar is, officially, a collection of Essays on Art and Democracy, but I like better how Hickey himself defines his intentions: ‘I write love songs for people who live in a democracy. Some of them follow.’ The writer goes even further in the opening essay, explaining that this is:
'An odd sort of memoir; a memoir without tears,...more I’m not even sure how I ended up reading this collection of essays by Dave Hickey but it was a good, sort of random encounter. But let me first set things straight, Air Guitar is, officially, a collection of Essays on Art and Democracy, but I like better how Hickey himself defines his intentions: ‘I write love songs for people who live in a democracy. Some of them follow.’ The writer goes even further in the opening essay, explaining that this is:
'An odd sort of memoir; a memoir without tears, without despair of exaltation—a memoir purged of those time-stopping exclamation points that punctuate all our lives.'

In case you are wondering—and I was wondering—what the titles mean, Hickey explains:
'People despise critics because people despise weakness, and criticism is the weakest think you can do in writing. It is the written equivalent of air guitar—flurries of silent, sympathetic gestures with nothing at their heart but the memory of the music.'

What attracted me the most about this collection were the music essays and, at the same time, I was rather concern I wouldn’t be able to go through the art pieces. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was the vast range of topics Hickey explored, some among the many include: Chet Baker, the wrestler Lady Godiva, Hank Williams, Perry Mason, LSD (‘it can teach you how much is literally out there’), the illusionists Siegfried and Roy, and many others.

The whole work bears proudly the sign of the south of the US, especially of Texas and Las Vegas. I guess I’m not the only one to think that art and the south don’t go well together. Once again, I was very wrong. Good thing there are people like Hickey who are here to open my eyes. The image Hickey depicts of Texas is the one I remember from when I lived there, and, at the same time, it surprises me. Vegas is something I know only from the movies or from what I heard by friends who visited, but the writer goes beyond the cliché image and provides something new:
'So try to think of Vegas this way: as America’s Saturnalia, as the nonstop, year-round 24-hour, American equivalent of that ancient Roman festival during which slaves took the roles of masters, only better and more glorious than that, since American slaves are less deeply affected by puritan values that their current masters—so American slaves in the role of Mediterranean masters, perhaps. Or just think of it as our province of stupid dreams, but stupid dreams that tell true stories. Because desire (as Ferenczi was always reminding Freud) is a way of telling the truth, not knowing it—and Vegas tells in ways that violate the canons and conventions of our culture’s high and low with equal impunity.'(less)

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Jan 04, 2009 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Besides his discussions of culture, this book contains a wonderful short story called Glass-Bottom Cadillac , which is about Hank Williams. For me, that short story alone was worth the price of admission. It remains one my favorite short stories and ought to be enshrined in one those thick-as-a- brick anthologies that are used in university undergraduate courses.

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May 21, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: truthiness

Living proof: don't judge a book by its cover.

A Glass-Bottomed Cadillac is one of the greatest things that I have ever read...and all that it essentially is is a story about Hank Williams Sr getting blown in the storage room of a greasy diner, then marveling at the myriad of soaps available to clean his soiled pants with. Now THAT is skillful writing.

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May 15, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

I feel a little bit like putting off writing about this book, but it's not as if my thoughts are likely to become any more clear, at least not till I read this book again two years from now.... I really really liked this, though it is not as advertised, at least not to me.

I might be the only one, but I thought a book called _Air Guitar_ would be a celebration of exuberance, an embrace of amateurishness and passion and whatever else. Instead, it's kind of an indictment of the same: in the title...more I feel a little bit like putting off writing about this book, but it's not as if my thoughts are likely to become any more clear, at least not till I read this book again two years from now.... I really really liked this, though it is not as advertised, at least not to me.

I might be the only one, but I thought a book called _Air Guitar_ would be a celebration of exuberance, an embrace of amateurishness and passion and whatever else. Instead, it's kind of an indictment of the same: in the title essay, Hickey compares criticism to air guitar to take both down, as being non-productive, non-contributing parasites on the real thing.

Of course, he says this because he wants criticism to do something better than that-- he doesn't want to write that kind of critcism, and by and large he doesn't. He also, and I think this is a separate strain, and not a part of the critique above, to break out of academic criticism, which he sees as he sees all academic-university pursuits, to take lessons from artists about what can be done, which he characterizes as freedom, and then education makes them rules: this is what you must do. The famous example is Pollock: Pollock shows you can drip paint, an increase in freedom, and the art teachers who follow him say you must drip paint.

In essence, Hickey's book is a staged series of encounters of that sort: he'll engage an artist, or something like one, and try to discern what is the freedom behind the original impulse, as a tonic to the way that event or object or individual has been portrayed till now. It's site specific in that way, though also rooted in the larger progress of Hickey's life: child of bohemian parents, art student, then art dealer, musician, and now, I guess, an academic, but not of the sort he derides.

Maybe the most surprising thing about the book, and it says something that it's a surprise, is the degree to which Hickey tries to persuade the reader, in the classic rhetorical sense: I'm so used to essayists being sort of free agents. Whether you're talking Ander Monson or Carl Wilson, it's like they are astronauts in this weird cosmos you'll never visit (even when you live there, you're not them, so it doesn't matter what they say) and they are sending back transmissions at a rate that it's too late to do anything about them..... In contrasts, though Hickey's book is dated (from 1996, I think, it feels at least a decade older than that, which might be the actual original pub date of some of the pieces) he really makes an effort to make you assent to what he's telling you. He really wants you to come along, which I don't know, it's kind of brave.

Maybe it's because he wants me to agree that I find myself disagreeing with him, in a way I'd never disagree with Monson or Wilson, because with those two, there'd be no point in disagreeing. Or maybe it really is because of what Hickey says. But my experience of the Universities is really different than Hickey's. I mean, I know he's older than me and has more experience with these things. But I still can't help but think his experience of that level of freedom-denial is as idiosyncratic to his experience as anything else, and that Us can serve a different end, where they support and encourage stuff that doesn't belong on the market.

But that's getting into a fairly complicated and lengthy disquisition, and no longer has much to do with what I thought about this book. And think about it I did-- it's a challenging read, or it was for me, and I'm nowhere near done thinking about it. So there's that. Until I read it again....(less)

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Jul 09, 2012 Mlprecise rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, art-theory

I rated the book 4 stars at first, then reminded myself that I should be rating Hickey's book, not his opinions. The book gets 5. Sure, I disagree with some (not all!) of his arguments, but I find his reasoning insightful and helpful. The book is fun and enlightening, and served as a good sort of inanimate sparring partner for a person in the ring of art academia. The best part of the book is that his writing style reinforces the arguments he makes (and the revelations he invites the reader to e...more

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Apr 28, 2009 Lauren Deland rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is simply my favorite work of art and cultural criticism ever, period. A blurb on the back of the book declares that compared to Dave Hickey, reading any other art critic feels like doing your taxes, and that sums it up quite neatly: Hickey writes about Las Vegas, Perry Mason, Liberace, and other cultural phenomena that some may hesitate to include under the banner of "art," but he does so with such devilish wit and evident joy that you won't really care. Hickey is a critic with a gift for...more

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Jan 06, 2009 Troy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, theory

In this book Dave Hickey covers the connections between art and democracy. Basically he talks about the way art (and culture in general) creates "cults of desire." Basically cults of desire, while nominally constrained by background, can also cross cultural divides. So a group of people from various backgrounds can from a cult of desire around an art work that they all love. (Imagine, for example, a group of rich, poor, black, and white kids all joining together in their love of hip hop.) Anyway...more

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May 27, 2012 Fatty rated it 3 of 5 stars

How can one be an anti-authority authority? I feel like there can only be so much undermining before a collapse. Still, it is worthwhile to have spoken the questions, and even somewhat courageous to speak them to oneself. And though he probably wouldn't like to hear it, the effervescence, blanketed as it is in cynicism, of Hickey's writing is seductive. Seductive enough, really, to elevate the weaker ideas and enervate the stronger. But my favorite idea, one that I prize even in spite of the rea...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-criticism, art, essays, read-years-ago

Read this one years ago.

Dave Hickey is one of the most funny, irreverent, and brutally honest art critics whose work I’ve read: He is known as the critic that all other art critics hate and that all artists love. Hickey’s Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy covers topics ranging from Hank Williams to the art market, Madame Bovary to muscle cars.

What I love about Dave Hickey is that his writing is beautifully textured, he has such an authentic voice, and he really does defy the dominant New Y...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Darran Mclaughlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

Really excellent. I bought this book from Skoob for £8.50 when I saw it, which is more than I normally pay for a paperback, so I was really hoping it would be good. I was on the look out for it because I read somewhere that the younger generation of American artists have all read two books, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and this. Having enjoyed Infinite Jest I thought I would see what the fuss was about here. It is catagorised as art criticism/theory but in fact many of the essays here a...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Susan Klinke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, essays, music, nonfiction, anthropology-culture

The author seems especially preoccupied with redeeming low culture and kitsch. It seems part of the postmodern let's level the playing field and get rid of class and hierarchy thing - there is no high or low. In theory I'm all for this, but then how do we determine what is of value as a society and who decides? I don't have a clue. Do we have periodic elections where all citizens have the chance to vote on items to be included in art museums? That would be interesting. But what about art experts...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Amar Pai rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book but found it kind of annoying.

Hickey spends a lot of time setting up strawmen that he then knocks down. "SOME people say that art and commerce should never mix... SOME people say that all commerce is vulgar..." Who says this? Maybe in the cloistered art-school world Hickey inhabits, this kind of silliness is normal, but nobody I know thinks like this.

His arguments are contrarian, but I often felt he was just being perverse for the sake of it... like an artier Chuck Klo...more

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Sep 03, 2009 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: newsweek-what-to-read-now, 2009

This was a dense book, to say the least.

A colleague of mine (with a BFA and MFA in tow) mentioned that he read a good bit of Dave Hickey in art school. I can believe it. I spent much of my time during the reading of this book thinking, "Jesus, I need to write this stuff down, otherwise I'm going to forget it immediately." Unfortunately, I didn't, so I did. I'm left at the end of this book feeling profoundly changed, yet I can't put my finger on the reasons why I liked this book so much.

The wri...more This was a dense book, to say the least.

A colleague of mine (with a BFA and MFA in tow) mentioned that he read a good bit of Dave Hickey in art school. I can believe it. I spent much of my time during the reading of this book thinking, "Jesus, I need to write this stuff down, otherwise I'm going to forget it immediately." Unfortunately, I didn't, so I did. I'm left at the end of this book feeling profoundly changed, yet I can't put my finger on the reasons why I liked this book so much.

The writing was beautiful and complex, wistful and damning at the same time. Hickey comes down hard on the "art world," with its methods of education, the dogmas of collecting, and its reactive frenzy around criticism. I'm disconnected from many of the things that he writes about - I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in a gallery. But I found his commentary so entertaining, so erudite, that I immediately felt immersed in this world.

But he writes about more than just vagueries of art. My favorite essay in this book was "The Heresy of Zone Defense." I made copies of it and forced my basketball obsessed co-worker to read and comment on it. Hickey details the differences between college and professional basketball, speaks about the invention of the game, details a seminal basketball moment between Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in game 5 of the 1980 NBA finals, and compares all of it to interpretations of Jackson Pollack. Genius. The best moment of this essay comes at the end - he adds his own commentary to the original guiding principles of basketball as outlined by its inventor, James Naismith. A taste:

5. The goal shall be horizontal and elevated.
(The most Jeffersonian principle of all: Labor must be matched by aspiration. To score, you must work your way down court, but you must also elevate! Ad astra.)

Other gems include the essays "Air Guitar", where he compares literary criticism to the "flurries of silent, sympathetic gestures" of the faux musician; "A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz," an essay on the realities of Liberace; "Pontormo's Rainbow," Hickey's first encounter with an adult who Knew What Was Good For Him.

Not every essay was a resounding success, but I enjoyed enough to recommend this book highly. Even if you aren't taking an art class. Or have never taken an art class. Nor are particularly interested in theory. It's still good.(less)

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Jun 11, 2008 Mark rated it 1 of 5 stars

Air Guitar seems to be a collection of Hickey’s thoughts on art, music and “coolness”. The essays are short and easy to read. I don’t know much about Dave Hickey, but this book seems to have a lot of Jack Kerouac influence in that it reads from the point of view of a person who wants to think that they see the world from a different point of view, one that is both much more enlightened and the most morally justified view. Kerouac, unlike Hickey, is however one of those special authors that can a...more Air Guitar seems to be a collection of Hickey’s thoughts on art, music and “coolness”. The essays are short and easy to read. I don’t know much about Dave Hickey, but this book seems to have a lot of Jack Kerouac influence in that it reads from the point of view of a person who wants to think that they see the world from a different point of view, one that is both much more enlightened and the most morally justified view. Kerouac, unlike Hickey, is however one of those special authors that can actually do it in an entertaining rather than preachy way; simply because he wrote in a way that overcame the human weakness of compartmentalizing and judging everyone according to his own viewpoint. Dave Hickey is no Jack Kerouac.
In my viewpoint, Hickey is full of hot air, guitar or otherwise. He throws names around as well as titles seeming to want to impress his readers with his special insights and understanding. He makes it a point to mention his father playing with black musicians that smoked marijuana, and how this was so over the heads of his white neighbors in Fort Worth. I imagine if his father was a “true” jazz musician, that his father was not concerned about anyone’s color or their smoking habits as long as they played well and did it consistently. His attacks are unwarranted and irrelevant. Throughout the collection, academia becomes synonymous with “uncool” simply because those in academia have evidently not lived the type of life that Hickey deems as worthy, or they disagree with him and his opinions. Dave Hickey attacks the social norm, not because it is wrong or right (something that is actually worth discussing) but because to do so seems like the best way to make an impression. In fact, Hickey seems to be about nothing more than how to impress the reader with his intellectual depth and out-of-the-box perspective. Unfortunately, he does so in a very un-intellectual way and very much within “the box”. Throughout, Hickey takes the easy way out, attacking any art/music authority/critic, musician/person/artist as being somehow out of the “true” artistic understanding loop if they do not adhere to his very limited and prejudiced viewpoint of art and music.
Hickey’s idea (I believe), that art and music transcends public and popular opinion, is lost in the barrage of attacks on all that he deems unworthy. The word “of course” shows up in many of his essays in essence asking the reader to not ask questions, but to simply accept his point of view because, of course, he knows or knows of all the right people and places. I have been a musician since I was seven years old, and have played professionally for many years. That being said, I have a feeling that if Mr. Hickey showed up he would be deemed as a “blowhard”, asking for rare and esoteric songs that he ran across on the internet and that very few people have ever heard of simply to impress my fellow musicians, and telling all the musicians in the band how each song they played is really a “rip-off” and a way that they all could catch the “true nature” of the tune if they only “understood”. There may be some who are impressed by rhetoric and name-dropping; there may be some who are intrigued by the concept of rebellion, and it seems obvious that Hickey is one of those people. I am not, and as a result I was not impressed with Air Guitar.

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Jan 26, 2009 Ann Klefstad rated it 5 of 5 stars

Best book of art writing ever. These all first appeared in the late lamented LA journal Art Issues, and Hickey's writing was why I subscribed. (Though there was also a Peter Schjeldahl article on Martin Luther that just killed me.) The journal did not survive its creeping smartiness, but fortunately before it folded its tents it published this fine and handsome anthology of its most miraculous writer's incidental works. You will not regret reading this. You'll not see art the same way after.

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Jul 31, 2012 Steve Turtell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hickey is one of my favorite critics. He's read all the important theorists and he doesn't simply regurgitate "a storm of abstract nouns"* onto the page. He's absorbed the ideas so well he can restate them more simply than the theorists (most of whom can't write for shit) because he's a good writer. Highly recommended.

* I have to admit I stole that phrase from Quinten Crisp. Thank you (and sorry) Quentin!

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Aug 03, 2011 Amy Talluto rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have heard about (and probably read excerpts from) this collection of art essays by legendary shoot-from-the-hip-wild-cowboy-of-art-criticism, Dave Hickey, since my art school times. Mostly the book is pretty fascinating and starts off strong with some very personal delve-ings into his views on Las Vegas as a home, his upbringing and parents, his fellow writing chums, and his philosophies on art. There are some self-indulgent clunkers...mainly when he abandons his own voice to impersonate cele...more

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May 11, 2009 Sean Billy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I started to like this book when I read the first few essays although a few went over my head when reading them the first time and weren't something i wanted to read again to understand. The whole thing was really pretentious I thought and a lot of it was a critique of the art dealing world. What kept me going were the essays about playing blues with his dad in Texas, interviews with musicians on the road, and an essay about Segried and Roy after he interviewed them.

I mean the guy did win a Mac...more

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Jan 01, 2009 David Glenn Dixon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hickey is such a seductive writer that it took me years to figure out he's a social theorist masquerading as an art critic.

As criticism, though, the Liberace piece is amazing.

Some of Hickey's best crit remains locked away in back issues of Art issues.--the piece on the Carpenters' "Goodbye to Love," for example. Someone needs to collect the uncollected.

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Jan 31, 2009 Bev rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: critics, libertarians, jazz fans

Everything in this book does find its way back to the subjects of art and democracy, but the essays usually start somewhere else, with rock n'roll or basketball or Las Vegas. And its always a fun trip. Sometimes I think he's putting me on to make a point. I feel that way about Camille Paglia too.
He advocates a sensual and consensual approach to art. He has a lot of issues about public funding for the arts, academia and ivory towers in general.
It's easy on my ears because my main contact with a...more

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Jun 27, 2010 Carl marked it as to-read

Intend to read "Romancing the Looky-Loos" essay referenced in chapter 1 of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

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Apr 11, 2009 Peter Sakievich rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great book on the love of things, while I do not agree with all his opinions, I do agree that we all have an inner love for those things that delight the senses, especially art. They are usually the things which others may disparage, but we all love regardless and that we simply can't let alone.

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Aug 12, 2010 Elise rated it 2 of 5 stars

This collection was...interesting to say the least. Based on personal taste, some of the content made me wince. But I must say that Dave Hickey has a way of writing that is explosively eloquent. My favorite was the essay on the female wrestler, Lady Godiva. A good read for any artist.

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Jan 23, 2010 Christopherseelie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this in one sitting. A modern day Stones of Venice. The memoir sections are used to illustrate larger topics of conversation with a vivacity usually limited to great poetry or fiction. The art world, which I was totally ignorant of outside the Art History vacuum, is made coherent and the place of the critic in its cosmos is validated without aggrandizement. Hickey's views on art and democracy are not without flaw, but his position is defensible and whatsmore, enjoyable. I don't really car...more

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Aug 18, 2007 Paul Griffin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I studied this book with Professor Nehamas at Princeton. I loved Nehamas so much I wrote a play about him, in which I pursued him with the sublimated erotic passion of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom. Hickey hits an unexpected grandslam here, dissecting art and our need for it with more style and precision than I've ever come across. "Because if these illusions were not just illusions, we should not be what we are: mortal creatures, who miss our dead friends, and thus can appreciate levitat...more

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About Dave Hickey

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...more

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Books by Dave Hickey

Prior Convictions: Stories from the Sixties

Between Artists: Twelve Contemporary American Artists Interview Twelve Contemporary American Artists

The World of Jeffrey Vallance: Collected Writings, 1978-1994

Liberace: A Rhinestone As Big As the Ritz

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“...The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous "bubble letters" of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world - simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before - thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion.” — 14 people liked it

“Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else's privilege.” — 13 people liked it

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