Far From Respectable

Daniel Oppenheimer is the author of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century. He has written for publications such as the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, Guernica, and The New Republic.

Dave Hickey, seen as both a legend and a villain, has influenced generations of artists, art critics, musicians, and writers. His book The Invisible Dragon, published in 1993, became a cult classic due to its powerful and provocative indictment of the art establishment and its demand to reexamine the role of beauty in art. Air Guitar, his next book, presented a new sort of cultural criticism that was both smart, nuanced, vulnerable, and down-to-earth, propelling Hickey to stardom as an unconventional thinker who was both liked and despised, and whose influence spread beyond the art world.

Among the best books on art for artists, Far from Respectable by Daniel Oppenheimer is a focused, evocative examination of Hickey's work, his impact on the field of art criticism, and the man himself, from his Huck Finn childhood to his drug-fueled stints as a New York gallerist and Nashville songwriter to his appointment as a tenured professor and MacArthur Fellow. Daniel Oppenheimer examines the controversial writer's distinctive takes on a wide range of subjects, including Norman Rockwell, Robert Mapplethorpe, academia, Las Vegas, basketball, and country music, drawing on in-person interviews with Hickey, his friends and family, and art world comrades and critics, and considers how Hickey and his vision of a "ethical, cosmopolitan paganism" built around a generous definition of art is more urgently needed than ever.

Author: Daniel Oppenheimer

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Far-Respectable-Dave-Hickey-His/dp/1477320156/

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 16 reviews)

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