Dragon days: introduction to the new edition -- Enter the dragon: on the vernacular of beauty 1 -- Nothing like the son: on Robert Mapplethorpe's X portfolio -- Prom night in flatland: on the gender of works of art -- After the great tsunami: on beauty and the therapeutic institution -- American beauty.

Dragon days: introduction to the new edition -- Enter the dragon: on the vernacular of beauty 1 -- Nothing like the son: on Robert Mapplethorpe's X portfolio -- Prom night in flatland: on the gender of works of art -- After the great tsunami: on beauty and the therapeutic institution -- American beauty.

_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. (shrink)

An expanded edition of Hickey's controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty--championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on 1993: the AIDS pandemic rages through yet another decade, leaving society and the arts devastated and bereft. Dave Hickey sits down to produce a slim volume, The Invisible Dragon. The book ignites a firestorm, and from its ashes "beauty" again rises as a dominant force in artistic life. Academics argue about theoretical minutiae. Artists pass (...) the book around like a samizdat. This 30th-anniversary edition brings back into print Dragon's four essays on beauty and commingles them with five previously uncollected essays. Hickey's 1974 profile of Dolly Parton anticipates Dolly's longevity as a cultural and feminist icon; his appreciation of Richard Pryor weaves an elegiac tapestry; his review of John Rechy's seminal gay novel Numbers outs its literary innovation in the face of a homophobia that otherwise ghettoized it; and his singular essay on Ed Ruscha, a paragon of arts writing by an extraordinary prose stylist, enjoins us to listen to art, not just look at it. An afterword by Hickey's friend and Dragon's editor "queers" the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS pandemic. The book was in part an attempt to make beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Only now can we fully appreciate how artists continue to harness beauty as a source of meaning and joy. Dave Hickey (1938-2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide. (shrink)