Dave Hickey
David Hickey was an American art critic who wrote for many American publications including Rolling Stone, ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, Harper's Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He was nicknamed "The Bad Boy of Art Criticism" and "The Enfant Terrible of Art Criticism". He had been 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.
Biography
Hickey graduated from Texas Christian University in 1961 and received his MA 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 the Reese Palley Gallery in New York. He 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 the arts editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.He wrote for most major cultural publications in the United States and abroad, including Rolling Stone, ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, Interview, Harper's Magazine, Vanity Fair, Nest, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Hickey regularly published "Revisions", a monthly column for Art in America. He also wrote for European publications like The London Review of Books, frieze, Situation, and Parkett.
He was 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 and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy. 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.
"I write love songs for people who live in a democracy", he remarked.
Profiles of Hickey have appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Economist, and Flaunt, among other publications. Interviews with Hickey have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Bomb, the New Art Examiner, Public Events, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Art Newspaper, and other magazines. He has been interviewed several times on topics such as art and Las Vegas by the BBC, PBS, and NPR.
In 2014, Hickey began making posts on Facebook during an illness. Eighteen months later, art historian Julia Friedman suggested a project documenting his experience. Two books resulted from the collaboration: Wasted Words and Dust Bunnies, published in 2016. Both books appeared in a lengthy review published by The Times Literary Supplement.
In 2015, he wrote the essay "War Is Beautiful, They Say" for the book War is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict by David Shields. This essay described the painterly influences and inspirations behind several war photographs published by The New York Times.
Hickey was married to art historian Libby Lumpkin. He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 12, 2021, at the age of 82.