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| Dave Hickey | |
|---|---|
| Name | Dave Hickey |
| Birth date | 1938-07-11 |
| Birth place | Fort Worth, Texas, United States |
| Death date | 2021-11-09 |
| Death place | Boulder, Colorado, United States |
| Occupation | Art critic, writer, curator, professor |
| Notable works | The Invisible Dragon; Air Guitar |
Dave Hickey
Dave Hickey was an American art critic, essayist, curator, and professor known for provocative defenses of popular taste and outspoken critiques of institutional art. His writing bridged discussions about contemporary art, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Pop Art while engaging broader cultural figures such as Hunter S. Thompson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Burroughs, and Norman Rockwell. Hickey's books and essays intersected with debates involving institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art as well as academic venues including Yale University, Columbia University, and University of Texas at Austin.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1938, Hickey grew up in Texas contexts connected to regional art and cultural scenes such as Dallas Museum of Art and Kimbell Art Museum. He attended local schools before serving in the United States Air Force during the late 1950s, an experience that overlapped historically with figures like Jack Kerouac and cultural currents tied to Beat Generation authors. After military service he pursued higher education at institutions associated with Texas higher education networks, including ties to University of Texas at Austin alumni and faculty circles connected to scholars of Modernism and American literature.
Hickey began publishing criticism in magazines and periodicals that intersected with the worlds of visual art and popular culture such as Artforum, Vanity Fair, The Village Voice, and Esquire. His early essays engaged artists like Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, and Richard Serra and addressed movements including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Conceptual art. Hickey's best-known book, The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, argued for a recuperation of beauty in contemporary discourse and invoked examples ranging from John Singer Sargent and Edgar Degas to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons. Another major work, Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, combined polemic and cultural history to discuss audiences, collectors, dealers, and institutions such as the Art Dealers Association of America and International Council of Museums. He curated exhibitions and collaborated with curators from institutions like the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Menil Collection, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and taught in academic settings including University of New Mexico, University of Colorado Boulder, and visiting appointments tied to departments at School of Visual Arts and Columbia University School of the Arts.
Hickey's combative style produced polarized responses across critics, curators, artists, and institutions. Supporters compared his rhetorical flair to critics and writers such as Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Susan Sontag, while detractors aligned his polemics with conservative critics of contemporary art like Michael Fried and commentators associated with culture wars debates. His 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship and 1998 awards were followed by public disputes with figures linked to the National Endowment for the Arts and debates over censorship highlighted by connections to controversies involving artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Hickey's outspoken personal tastes and remarks about artists, collectors, and museum professionals provoked resignations, published rebuttals in outlets like Art in America and The New York Times, and sustained conversations involving publishers such as Farrar, Straus and Giroux and editors at Aperture.
Hickey influenced a generation of writers, curators, and artists through his essays, lectures, and teaching, shaping discourse at venues like the Biennale di Venezia, Documenta, and major American museums. His advocacy for aesthetic pleasure over institutional theory resonated with some proponents of the neo-pop revival and collectors associated with galleries such as Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner Gallery, and Gladstone Gallery. Students and admirers include critics and curators who went on to positions at Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, and academic posts at New York University and Princeton University. His books remain cited in scholarship on contemporary aesthetics, often alongside texts by Arthur Danto, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, and his approach contributed to ongoing debates about the roles of museums, market forces represented by Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and the cultural politics of taste.
Hickey lived in the American Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, maintaining friendships with artists, dealers, and writers including Dorothea Tanning, John Baldessari, Cecily Brown, and collectors connected to institutions like the Menil Collection and Dallas Museum of Art. He married and divorced during his life and mentored numerous younger critics and curators through teaching and correspondence tied to university archives at places such as Smithsonian Institution research centers. Hickey died on November 9, 2021, in Boulder, Colorado, leaving a contentious but influential body of work that continues to be discussed in relation to debates about beauty, taste, and institutional power in art.
Category:American art critics Category:1938 births Category:2021 deaths