From the legendary and iconoclastic critic Dave Hickey, a collection of twenty of his most emblematic essays on art
“We really don’t need to know the aesthetic and moral parameters of a work to love it—only to know they are there.” —Dave Hickey
The late Dave Hickey was a singular voice on art, music, democracy, and culture. Known for his radical criticism, he united different worlds through a range of literary styles and techniques to ultimately explore what it means to be human. Complementing his iconic collections Air Guitar and The Invisible Dragon, Feint of Heart unites twenty of Hickey’s characteristically astute essays on art from over twenty years, most of which were originally published in exhibition catalogues that are long out of print. The result is a volume that shows the writer at his most creative and incisive in an ever-relevant exploration of beauty and value. Compiled and with an introduction by the writer and critic Jarrett Earnest, this latest book is ideal for cult followers and new readers of Hickey, for artists and art critics, and for thinkers across all disciplines.
Including essays on Terry Allen, Karen Carson, Sarah Charlesworth, Vija Celmins, Vernon Fisher, Robert Gober, Ann Hamilton, Luis Jiménez, Hung Lui, Josiah McElheny, Elizabeth Peyton, Lari Pittman, David Reed, Bridget Riley, Norman Rockwell, Ed Ruscha, Steve Schapiro, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol, as well as Hickey’s 2002 text “Buying the World,” an incisive and ever-relevant exploration of beauty and value.
Author Biography:
Dave Hickey (1938–2021) was an American art critic and essayist known for his sharp wit and keen eye. In the late sixties, he opened A Clean Well-Lighted Place—an art gallery in Austin named after the short story by Ernest Hemingway—before moving to New York, where he worked as the director of the Reese Palley Gallery. He served as the executive editor for Art in America; staff songwriter at Glaser Publications, in Nashville; and arts editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He later served as associate professor of art criticism and theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His writing appeared in publications including Rolling Stone, Harper’s, The Village Voice, and Vanity Fair, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues. He received the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in 1994 and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2001 for his influential art criticism. His books include The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (1993) and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (1997).
Jarrett Earnest is the author of What It Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (2018) and Valid Until Sunset (2023) as well as editor of The Young and Evil: Queer Modernism in New York, 1930–1955 (2020), Painting Is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry, 1980–1993 (2021), and Devotion: today’s future becomes tomorrow archive (2022). His criticism has been published in magazines and exhibition catalogues around the world, and appears regularly in the New York Review of Books.
