Episode Details

In this episode of the podcast, I talk to Blake Smith and Gary Kornblau about the 30th anniversary edition of Dave Hickey’s seminal 1993 book The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty.

Blake is currently a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as the author a great (which is to say, very flattering) review of my 2021 book on Hickey, and he was a stalwart participant in the Substack “book club” I organized on the new edition of Dragon. Gary is faculty at the ArtCenter College of Design. More pertinently, he was Dave’s great editor, having plucked him out of obscurity to write for art Issues, the small LA-based journal that Gary founded and edited. He was the one who gave Dave just the right amount of rein to do his best work, and also the one who conceptualized and edited both Invisible Dragon and Dave’s subsequent book Air Guitar.

The episode covers a lot of ground, including the impact of the original version of the book, the reasons why Gary decided to put out a 30th anniversary edition, and Gary’s decision to use the opportunity to try to “queer” Dave. It’s a blast. I hope you listen.

I also wanted to take the opportunity to run the below excerpt from my book on Dave. It covers the background to the writing and reception of Invisible Dragon, and is, IMO, a mighty fine piece of writing in its own right. Hope you enjoy.

On June 12, 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, announced that it was cancelling Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, its scheduled exhibition of photographs by the celebrated American photographer, who had died of AIDS in March. The Corcoran’s primary motive in cancelling was fear.

Only a few months before, a long-simmering debate about the role of the federal government in funding the arts had boiled over in response to Piss Christ, a photograph of a small icon of Jesus on the cross floating in a vitrine of urine. Its creator, Andres Serrano, had received a small chunk of a larger grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the offending photograph had been included in a touring exhibition that was also funded by federal money. During that tour, the photograph caught the eye of the American Family Association, a conservative Chris­tian advocacy group dedicated to fighting what it saw as anti-Christian values in entertainment and the arts. They rang the alarm.

Soon after, New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato called out Piss Christ from the floor of the Senate. He tore up a reproduction of the photo and denounced it as a “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity.” North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who would soon lead the charge against Mapplethorpe, added: “I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him. Because he is not an artist, he is a jerk. . . . Let him be a jerk on his own time and with his own resources. Do not dishonor our Lord.” Patrick Trueman, president of the American Family Association, testified to Congress that governmental support of work like Piss Christ would make it less likely that prosecutors would pursue or win cases against child pornographers.

The ensuing congressional battle, over funding for the NEA, became the