Dave Hickey

I love Dave Hickey. I remember reading Air Guitar as an undergrad and it was the first thing I read for a class that i could relate to in any way. I agree with his views on higher ed for the most part and could not agree more with his analysis of the contemporary art "world" and it's conflated sense of self-importance. I worked for a very high end appraiser for the past year and a half and it was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing when clients would call asking if we could "just make the value a bit higher??" Which was usually only about, say $100,000 or so. These same millionaire collectors would troll the auction sites themselves to get the latest sales prices and then turn around and expect us to inflate the insurance value to the auction price. Hickey summed it up so well by pointing out that art has no value. Once people resign themselves to that, I think the cncept of being a "professional" artist can seem much more realistic. If someone likes your work and wants to buy it, then sell it. Beyond that it is all a game of chess between a very small group of wealthy people controlling a small group of artworks that have been, with the help of museums and galleries, inflated to values that could never be realized outside of the fantasy world of the auction house. This world juxtaposed with the equally fantastic arena of academic critique often makes me want to vomit. But at the end of the day theory is just that, an idea. We can shuck and jive oursleves to death during these two years or we can be honest with ourselves. I make things because I enjoy making things. If someone wants to buy the things I make then that is great. If they don't then I will still make them. All the defeatist lore that was contained in the other writings did not seem to have any effect on me. I will continue to get sticky glue covered fingers every night from pasting ladies heads onto superhero bodies and I will continue to dress up in costumes for my own amusement. When I first decided to go to art school all those years ago I had this cheesy idea of it being a community of "kindred spirits" filled with fun artsy parties and people who would nurture and lift eachother to new heights. But the main problem i found with art school as an undergrad was that 18 year-olds, even cool arty ones, have no fucking idea who they are or what they are doing and the arena of art school just becomes an extension of the competetive, unsure awkwardness of highschool. One would hope that grad school would be more akin to the utopian arty paradise I dreamed of, but Hickey was right about that too. Fuck it, I am going to go have a beer...