Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy"Air Guitar" is Dave Hickey's "memoir without tears"--a journey through the vernacular cultural landscape of the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back from the vantage-point of his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, Hickey speculates on everything from jazz and rock-and-roll to basketball and professional wrestling--from magic and psychedelia to gambling and the culture of "little stories"--from automotive design to series television to Saturday-morning cartoons. The emphasis in these twenty-three essays is on the way "the arts" function in the drift of everyday life, outside the venues of official culture, and on singular "lives in the arts, " lived outside those venues, with meditations on the careers of Liberace, Hank Williams, Chet Baker, Andy Warhol, Johnny Mercer, Norman Rockwell, magicians Siegfield & Roy, and wrestler Lady Godiva. Underlying Hickey's writing is an abiding belief that cultural life in a democracy can, and occasionally does function in a democratic manner, sustained by the whims of affection and the commerce of opinion. |
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User Review - kbullfrog - LibraryThingThese lovely essays on pop culture, art and music, have altered my views and added to my overall art vocabulary. I especially love his essay on Hank Williams in the Glass Bottom Cadillac. Although a ... Read full review
Contents
Unbreak My Heart An Overture | 9 |
A Home in the Neon | 18 |
The Little Church of Perry Mason | 138 |
Copyright | |
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American appeared in Art art criticism art dealer Art issues art world artists basketball began Butch cars Charlie Parker Chet Baker consequence cool course culture Dave Hickey Donald Duck dreams embodied endeavor everything experience fact feel Felicite Felicite's Flaubert Fred Rose fucking gallery girls Grover guys illusions innocence investment Jackson Pollock jazz Johnny Mercer June Cleaver Keith Richards kids knew lady language less Liberace living looking Magda magic movie muscle-boys Museum narrative never night nineteen objects painting parrot Perry Mason play player psychedelic psychedelic art redeem remember Rhinestone Ricky Jay rock-and-roll Rockwell seemed Siegfried and Roy silly Simple Heart sitting smiled social somehow songs spectators story stuff talk tell Texas theatrical things thought tion truth trying Vegas virtue Volbach wanted Warhol Waylon wrestling writing
Bibliographic information
| Title | Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy Art issues. Press |
| author of text accompanying photos | Dave Hickey |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Art issues. Press, 1997 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Nov 13, 2007 |
| ISBN | 0963726455, 9780963726452 |
| Length | 215 pages |
| Subjects | › Art / Criticism & Theory Social Science / Popular Culture |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |