The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty and Other Matters: 30th Anniversary Edition

by Dave Hickey

"If this book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the ―Peter Schjeldahl

An expanded edition of Hickey's controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty―championed by artists, reviled by art critics—is as powerful as ever 30 years on.

This special cloth and foil-stamped edition brings back into print The Invisible Dragon 's four essays on beauty. It commingles them with five previously uncollected essays by the MacArthur Foundation "genius." Among the supplementary essays is Hickey's surprising early profile of Dolly Parton; his elegiac tribute to comedian Richard Pryor; a description of the literary innovation of John Rechy's seminal gay novel Numbers; and a personal essay on the art of writing. Hickey's singular analysis of paintings by Ed Ruscha enjoins us to listen to art, not just look at it. His coupling of Caravaggio's 1601 Incredulity of St. Thomas and Robert Mapplethorpe's 1978 photograph Lou, NYC still has the ability to shock. Hickey's interpretations of art by Bellini, Velázquez, Raphael, and others provide urgent lessons for contemporary art and gender politics. An afterword by Hickey's friend and Dragon's editor "queers" the brash, heterosexual gambler. It situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the traumatic time of the AIDS plague. The book originally made beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Today, Hickey's prescient diagnosis of the "therapeutic institution" resonates loudly. Artists respond by harnessing beauty as a source of meaning and of joy.

Dave Hickey (1938-2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of modern times. He opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was instrumental in creating Outlaw country music. After the publication of The Invisible Dragon,  Hickey became known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide.

159 pages, Hardcover

Published October 24, 2023

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

[Nat]

Dave Hickey gave the graduation speech at RISD when my brother graduated in 2003—I remember that he was funny but can't remember any particulars. I knew him from Air Guitar and his book on Bill Clinton and Elvis (I wonder how that holds up) [correction—that is Greil Marcus]. This was a nice blast of the 90s, and I think I can dig his pushback against both Fried's anti-theatricality arguments and overly spartan minimalism. There's some family resemblance between those arguments and the much less suave position Tom Wolfe takes up in his anti-modernist screeds.

[Danae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo amo, hombre inteligentísimo y la edición especial es muy linda.
Totalmente innecesario el postfacio del editor con ideas callamperas de “teoría queer”.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Improved my knowledge of all things art, both in terms of specific aspects and philosophical grounding. Hickey is the rare critic who acknowledges all of the pluses and problems of our current weird version of capitalist art consumption. He is realist enough to know there isn't a chance of it working any other way, but idealistic enough to think art is too important to be left only to the professional artists.

Highly recommended.