by Dave Hickey
Incidentally, one of the most densely packed things I've read in a while, and I'll probably be unpacking it for another while. It's not one that I can easily break down into memorable sound bites--but on the other hand that probably affirms my initial thought that this may be the first book I've read that would make it into my theoretical post-secondary art syllabus.
On books, art, music: "In society, these objects were occasions for gossip--for the commerce of opinion where there is no truth. In school, they were occasions for mastery where there is no truth--an even more dangerous proposition..." 14
"...what works of art might do in the world-how they might redeem isolation...by creating about them a confluence of simple hearts, a community united not in what they are--not in any cult of class, race, region, or ideology--but in the collective mystery of what they are not and now find embodied before them..." 30
"There is a vast and usually dialectical difference between that which we wish to see and that which we wish to see represented." 47-8
"...there is an element of positivity in the visible world, and in color particularly, that totally eludes the historicity of language, with its protocols of absence and polarity." 50
On democracy: Hickey relates a typical story of a friend visiting his Las Vegas home, commenting on how much more "authentically" beautiful the natural sunset is than the artificial neon lighting of the strip. "The genuine rhinestone or...the imitation pearl". He counters with the idea that if Vegas is artificial, then at least it is an artificiality with no artifice--a place where money is just money, with no undercurrent of accrued wealth commensurate to time it's been owned, no correlation with status. Each person's money is no more than money when facing the odds at the machines. This is particularly interesting to read after doing some research into fine art auctions, situations which in some ways mimic a casino. 52
On psychedelic art, language, and the reactionary: "So in general, we might say that these anti-academic styles prioritize complexity over simplicity, pattern over form, repetition over composition, feminine over masculine, curvilinear over rectilinear, and the fractal, the differential, and the chaotic over Euclidean order. They celebrate the idea of space over the idea of volume, the space before the object over the volume within it. They elevate concepts of externalized consciousness over constructions of the alienated, interior self. They are literally and figuratively "outside" styles. ...(but) for all their pretense of rebellion, these styles are only truly rebellious in their ebullient, pop-psychedelic appropriation." 94
"...it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table of phenomenal nature 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." 95 .,..and how art (particularly in his opinion, psychedelic art) can serve as an "incandescent bridge", making something out of this nothing, filling it with possibility.
"The song's too simple, and we're too complicated and excited." 101 On the importance of human imperfection
"I have always associated the desire to make money with a profound lack of confidence in one's ability to make a living." 106
"When you trade a piece of green paper with a picture on it, signed by a bureaucrat, for a piece of white paper with a picture on it, signed by an artist, you haven't bought anything, since neither piece of paper is worth anything. You have translated your investment and your faith from one universe of value to another." 109
On Jackson Pollock and when drip painting went from being "okay" to being mandatory (in certain circles/schools), and the evolution of art as compared to that of basketball: "Henceforth it has always seemed to me that the tick of civilization lies in recognizing the moment when a rule ceases to liberate and begins to govern." 157
"Thus, in modern painting, our comfort level with illusion is always a matter of how exquisitely we delay the illusion's taking hold..." 186
On the danger of assigning any moral value to art: "The sports world conducts and ongoing referendum on the manner in which we should cooperate and compete. The art world conducts an ongoing referendum on how things should look and the way we should look at things-or it would, if art were regarded as sports are, as a wasteful, privileged endeavor through which very serious issues are sorted out." 204
"If you catch their eye, their hearts and minds will follow" 209
