by Jon Lackman | 15 April 2009 | Books, Contemporary
Dave Hickey’s indispensable essay collection The Invisible Dragon is finally back in print. From the press release:
The Invisible Dragon, originally published in 1993, is often regarded as art critic Dave Hickey’s seminal work. Hailed by artists, the book made a forceful case for beauty in a time when the notion was completely dismissed by theory-obsessed critics. In four influential essays that amounted to a manifesto, Hickey assailed the hyper-institutionalism that in his view drowned out the real pleasures that attract people to art. Long out of print and difficult to find, this beloved little book is now back in a revised and expanded edition. A new introduction provides a context for what Hickey now calls his “intellectual temper tantrums”; and a new essay, “American Beauty,” concludes the volume with a stirring tribute to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty.
