The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded - Softcover

Hickey, Dave

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226333191 ISBN 13: 9780226333199

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2012

Synopsis

The Invisible Dragon made a lot of noise for a little book When it was originally published in 1993 it was championed by artists for its forceful call for a reconsideration of beauty—and savaged by more theoretically oriented critics who dismissed the very concept of beauty as naive, igniting a debate that has shown no sign of flagging.

With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back to fan the flames. More manifesto than polite discussion, more call to action than criticism, The Invisible Dragon aims squarely at the hyper-institutionalism that, in Hickey’s view, denies the real pleasures that draw us to art in the first place. Deploying the artworks of Warhol, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mapplethorpe and the writings of Ruskin, Shakespeare, Deleuze, and Foucault, Hickey takes on museum culture, arid academicism, sclerotic politics, and more—all in the service of making readers rethink the nature of art. A new introduction provides a context for earlier essays—what Hickey calls his "intellectual temper tantrums." A new essay, "American Beauty," concludes the volume with a historical argument that is a rousing paean to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty.

Written with a verve that is all too rare in serious criticism, this expanded and refurbished edition of The Invisible Dragon will be sure to captivate a new generation of readers, provoking the passionate reactions that are the hallmark of great criticism.

About this title

Review:

This is a pithy collection of essays on the nature, meaning, and destiny of beauty in the late 20th century. For such a slender volume (just 64 pages), the broad scope of these essays covers a lot of ground. Dave Hickey discusses the work of Raphael, Andy Warhol, Caravaggio, and Michel Foucault, traversing centuries of ideas about aesthetics, sexuality, religion, and culture. Hickey, a professor of art criticism and theory at the University of Nevada and the author of a book of short fiction, boldly ventures to compare Robert Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio to Shakespeare's Sonnets. A delight for the mind.

About the Author:

Dave Hickey writes cultural criticism. He is former executive editor of Art in America and the author of Air Guitar. He has served as a contributing editor for the Village Voice and as the arts editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He is now a professor of English at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0226333191
• ISBN 13: 9780226333199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152