Literature Review 3/4

Chrissie Calvert

Literature Review 3/4

MFA Part 3, 2023

Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty

Author: Dave Hickey

The essay ‘Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty’ by Dave Hickey featured in his book ‘The Invisible Dragon’, talks to the idea that the critical vernacular of beauty is lacking in the Fine Art sphere of understanding. He explores the different values of art dealers versus art professionals within art institutions. His essay takes a philosophical stance which implores us to reconsider beauty as a legitimate concept which holds the power and potential to inspire.

Hickey begins by explaining the catalyst to his potentially controversial stance. The resounding silence of a lecture hall which was in response to his impromptu declaration that ‘beauty’ would be the hot topic of the 90’s. The silence gave him credence that indeed it could be. He recalls the sensation and feeling which his spontaneous outburst caused, “‘Beauty” just hovered there, a word without a language, quiet, amazing, and alien in that sleek, institutional space- like a Pre-Raphaelite dragon aloft on its leather wings.” Hickey explains that the feeling of vacancy and uninterestedness which surrounded the word was an abyss of understanding which he endeavours to explore.

To continue his research he quizzed artists, students, critics and curators about beauty, specifically with the intent to uncover the vernacular of the concept, yet in each instance the subject unequivocally sparked conversation about the marketplace. This was not the response he was looking for. “The transactions of value enacted under the patronage of our new, “nonprofit” institutions were exempted from this cultural critique, presumed to be untainted, redemptive, disinterested, taste-free, and politically benign. Yeah, right.” Further analysis, (by Hikey), of the reasoning behind this conjecture is that, “Art dealers, I found, “only care about how it looks,” while the art professionals employed by our new institutions “really care about what it means.”’

Hickey expounds upon his idea as to where and where the lack of responsiveness to beauty as a hard concept originates. “I can’t imagine any but the most naif giddily abandoning an autocrat who monitors appearances for a bureaucrat who monitors your soul” Michael Foucault, he says, proposes a variation of this idea in ‘Surveiller et punir’. In this aforementioned book Foucault juxtaposed, “with a grisly antique text”, the public execution of Damiens to Jeremy Bentham’s theory of reformative incarceration (Panopticon). Hickey explains that Foucault believed the king’s (the autocrat) method of justice to be more just, than Bentham’s (the bureaucrat). This is because, “The king demands from us the appearance of loyalty...Bentham’s warden on the other hand , demands our souls, and... he relies on our having internalized his relentless surveillance in the form of self-destructive guilt and henceforth punishing and ultimately destroying ourselves.” Hickey proposes that our culture is so heavily weighted on Bentham’s side, that we cannot see them as equally tainted. “We are such obedient children of the Panopticon...we have transformed the complex choice between the king’s savage justice and Bentham’s bureaucratic discipline into..: the “corrupt old market” versus the “brave new institution.” Beauty in this scenario is despised because the art dealers, like Foucault’s king, traffic in objects and appearances.” Hickey explains that the institutions are under pressure to “care what it means”, and therefore out of possible necessity distrust appearances. He describes beauty as “the snake in the garden”, and theorises that beauty steals the institution's power by eliciting discomfort to the “artists who have committed themselves to the excruciating tedium of plain honesty.”

Hickey believes it boils down to one thing, and that thing is the fact that “Beauty sells”. He compares his grandmother’s prejudice against those in trade and those to get their names in the newspaper, as parallel to those artists who position themselves squarely against beauty as a serious endeavour. He argues, “Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells something else, it is a seductive advertisement.” Hickey believes the greatest works of art have both an idolatry quality, while also selling a concept. He ends this section by posing a question: “Is the institution itself not a marketplace?”

Hickey bounces from his last point on the idolatry of Fine Artworks to make an adjacent point, that point is “there are issues worth advancing in images that are worth admiring”. He makes the point that all images have the potential to be powerful. “This is the sheer, ebullient, slithering, dangerous fun of it. No image is inviolable in our dance hall of visual politics.” To solidify his point, Hickey talks to the Renaissance, specifically how pictures and images at this point had become political tools to indoctrinate the masses. “The task of beauty is to enfranchise the audience and knowledge its power...to advance an argument by valorising the picture’s problematic content.” Hickey talks to Caravaggio’s ‘The Madonna of the Rosary’ , of its “successful visual litigation” He acknowledges that the, “argumentative frisson”, the work inspired at the time has now neutralised itself leaving only the “cosmetic superstructure of that antique argument”. Now that Caravaggio’s work has done its job, it resides out of the public eye except for within exhibitions. The point Hickey is making here is, “whether contemporary images are really enhanced by being in a museum at birth and attended as one might attend a movie, whether there might be work to do among the living.” He is questioning the difference between having the church and state dictate the content of artwork to the way artwork currently detours through alternate institutions before the beholder can view them. Continuing on from the analogy mentioned above, Hickey concludes this point by saying, “Beauty has been banished from their domain and we are left counting the beads and muttering texts of academic sincerity.”

The final argument Hickey makes on the vernacular of beauty is in relation to Robert Mapplethorps ‘X Portfolio’. On Mapplethorps’ works, “A single artist with a single group of images... directly threatened those in actual power with his celebration of marginality.” Hickey states that ‘Robert’ appropriates a Baroque vernacular of beauty which Hickey believes outperforms the “puritanical canon of visual appeal” that he says is espoused by what he calls the therapeutic institutions. Mapplethorpe, he says, poses an unanswerable question to the institutions. That question is, “Should we really look at art, however banal, because looking at art is somehow good for us, while ignoring any specific good that the individual work or artist might propose to us?” Hickey believes mild appreciation of art is only for artworks where the politics of those artworks are irrelevant. Living artworks, he says, should be beheld in passion, whether that be against, or for, what the artwork proposes. “In our mild appreciation, we refuse to engage the argument of images that deal so intimately with trust, pain, love and the grieving of the self.”

Hickey believes that the vernacular of beauty is a potent instrument for change. Through various points Dave Hickey explores why the vernacular of beauty is lacking, and why that is a problem. He speaks to parallels within histories of church and state controlling the type of art made, and the art institutions of the 90’s, where importance is not placed on what it looks like, but what it means. Foucault’s belief in autocratic judgement being more just than that of a bureaucracy is mentioned and interrogated. Beauty as a hard concept, Hickey believes, has an important role in why successful artworks ignite change, and therefore, deserves discussion.

Bibliography

Hickey, Dave. “Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty.” In The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, 29-63. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.