The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty

With this revised and expanded edition, Hickey is back to fan the flames. More manifesto than polite discussion, more call to action than criticism, The Invisible Dragonaims squarely at the hyper-institutionalism that, in Hickey's view, denies the real pleasures that draw us to art in the first place. Deploying the artworks of Warhol, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Mapplethorpe and the writings of Ruskin, Shakespeare, Deleuze, and Foucault, Hickey takes on museum culture, arid academicism, sclerotic politics, and more—all in the service of making readers rethink the nature of art. A new introduction provides a context for earlier essays—what Hickey calls his "intellectual temper tantrums." A new essay, "American Beauty," concludes the volume with a historical argument that is a rousing paean to the inherently democratic nature of attention to beauty.

Written with a verve that is all too rare in serious criticism, this expanded and refurbished edition of The Invisible Dragonwill be sure to captivate a new generation of readers, provoking the passionate reactions that are the hallmark of great criticism.