Over the summer of 2017, we were asked to read Air Guitar by Dave Hickey. I found the book offered a variety of perspectives on democracy seen through the lens of the arts. Mediums such as prose, theatre, music and visual art were explored. Hickey’s outlook and writing style is at first seemingly centred around his own self, but after a few chapters it becomes clear that he has a very devout and in-depth understanding of the some what opaque mechanisms of ‘democracy’.
He talks a lot about jazz and it’s vanguard position within the language of democracy. Also there is a chapter on Liberarce and sexuality. How sexuality can exist but is not talked about:
‘Liberarce’s closet was as democratically invisible as the emperor’s new clothes, and just as revolutionary. Everybody “got it”. But nobody said it.’
Going on to describe his aunt’s and uncle’s watching Liberarce on TV, but talking about his sexuality is a round about way :
‘A bit like cousin Ed, aint’ he’
He also talks about the French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s ‘A simple heart’ (p25) and the parrot. Flaubert was the first writer to write a novel from the perspective of the opposite sex, in this case female. Flaubert’s writing would go on to influence Kafka.
The American painter Norman Rockwell (p32) is then discussed and his influence on other artists. He states that it is not someone like Rockwell’s paintings that create normaility:
‘Governments, religions and network statisticians create normality, articulate it, and try to impose it’
Talking about representation, he says (p47) :
‘It was funny because it wasn’t real!’
He discusses the art market in ‘The Birth of the Big, Beautiful Art Market’ (p61) with a high degree of honesty and gives out thought provoking information that functions as both warning and advice. The information he offers is in many ways the prequel to the ’12 million dollar stuffed shark’ by Don Thompson. I particularly liked that he was trying to achieve :
‘Ed Ruscha’s expression ‘Huh? Wow!’ (as opposed to ‘Wow! Huh?’ )
Which flips the idea of creating art as spectacle. The systems of value is explained off through the marketing of desire and creation of desire (p68):
‘Like the cars we loved, had only recently become works of art’ (p65)
‘And finally, American business stopped advertising products for what they were, or for what they could do, and begun advertising them for what they meant – as sign systems within the broader culture’ ( p66/67)
He attempts to justify his apparent alignment of neo-liberalism and the arts with capitalism by describing it as a failing system that had now become:
‘a mine of idolatry and democracy’ (p71)
Democracy is further explored in his experimentation with the counter culture and psychedelic culture and drugs (p88)
Warhol and cinema is discussed on p99 where he says :
‘Brakhage told us what we already knew as children of the cold war, no matter how hard we tried, we could not be free – thus inviting us, paradoxically , into the rigours of Utopian political orthodoxy. Warhol’s film on the other hand, told us what we needed to know, that, no matter how hard we tried, we could not be ordered’
On the subject of dealing and the art market. A chapter that lays bare the murky world of the art market:
‘Regarding the degradation of trying to sell objects to people who know nothing about art, I can only assure you that everyone in this culture understands the freedom and permission of art’s mandate. To put it simply: Art ain’t rocket science, and beyond a proclivity to respond and permission to do so, there are no prerequisites for looking at it ‘ (p107)
The chapter titled ‘Glass Bottomed Cadillac’ (p122) was by far my most liked. I was on the plane to Cyprus and was listening to a collection of Hank Williams’s music and reading the book. Imagine my surprise when the next chapter was actually about Hank Williams. Hickey wrote it from the perspective of Hank Williams, as if he was Hank Williams. Maybe he had been inspired by Flaubert’s writing. His descriptive language and imaginative rendering of the lead up and death of Hank Williams is amazing. I felt it was one of the best pieces of creative writing that I had ever read.
The next chapter ‘Romancing the Looky Loos’ (p146) dealt with the relationship between the ‘underground’ and the main stream media, when a group of ‘underground’ artists approach the LA Times asking them for coverage of their radical event and get frustrated stating ‘fucking Los Angeles Times’ when they don’t receive coverage. I didn’t necessarily agree with Hickey that artists should not be approaching such main stream institutions. After all, art is about changing the way we think and to change things, you need to nuzzle, push and some how squeeze in with the main stream.