Response to David Hickey

The podcast that featured Dave Hickey’s lecture on the subject of selling art without selling out was a very opinionated speech. When it comes to having a strong opinion about art and the current culture of the art world, the Culture Critic and Professor of English from the University of Nevada, Dave Hickey has it. Some of the key notes in his lecture were very biased however, he did bring up a lot of good questions and posed some insight into the art world.
Hickey mentioned that right now is the perfect time for anyone to be 25 years old or younger. Quite frankly, in my opinion this is not true. Currently I fall into this category and am able to understand this perspective of life. Even though Hickey is a professor and deals with students every day, it seems as though he may be out of touch with this perspective. People under the age of 25 today are faced with many different problems in our growing global economy. Whether it’s trying to find a job, trying to keep a job, trying to get into college, trying to pay bills, or trying to get out of the house, these are all just some of the many different obstacles this age group faces. If he was attempting to imply that this age group does not have to worry about anything or have incredible opportunity in front of them, I strongly believe he is wrong. In my experience, it seems as though a better age range would be people who are 18 or younger. At this time in life the adolescent is usually still able to live off of their parents and their primary concerns involve the day to day struggles of school.
In his lecture, Hickey also said that there are people today who like art better than money, which is not necessarily bad, but it is bad when there are artists that like money better than art. He brings up an interesting point in this statement that does describe most artists today. Artists such as Damien Hirst are creating “artwork” that have been inflating the prices of the art world as a whole. Thanks to these artists who are more concerned about the price tag of their artwork instead of the meaning or beauty of their art there has been a loss in the appreciation of art. Like Hickey said, now is the time for people to behave honorably and meticulously because you will stand out. People need to behave with moral intentions because if we behave right than all we can potentially lose is money. I would be curious to know if any of the artists from previous centuries went into the art world to make money.
Hickey continued to describe the love of money and the devaluation of art throughout the rest of his lecture. He mentioned such points as:
• Did anyone get in the art world to make money?
• Why is everyone worrying about money?
• What are you going to do if you have a lot of money?
• Unless you have a drug habit, there is no need for money at all.
• Who cares about money, we should care about being right. You can’t be right all the time, but you can never be wrong.
• Art dealers are creating value, but not real value – real value is what art dealers pride themselves on.
• We’re having a strange moment that is a return of primary practice, just like the 80s and 90s which was the biggest hypocritical art movement. During this time period, public funding disappeared and museums started closing. Artists were displaying confetti and dog terds as installation art to lure people into the art gallery to buy the other primary pieces of art.