"Air Guitar" by Dave Hickey (Art Issues Press, 1997)
In this collection, Hickey proves himself the Montaigne of art writers, identifying even today as a “personal essayist” rather than a critic,. “The Birth of the Big Beautiful Art Market” begins with a playful riff on the fourth gospel—“In the beginning was the Car, and the Car was with Art, and the Car was Art,”—and goes on to explain how auto marketing in the 1950s led to “the whole of American commerce [becoming] an art market.” Of course, the real enjoyment here, as always with Hickey, is in the details. Along the way, we find out that the author evolved his aesthetic sense through customizing a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, a bronze-lacquered 1937 Chevrolet pickup and other GM models and that an acquaintance of his began his art education by pondering lowriders in El Paso, Texas. But it is in “Dealing”, that Hickey really delivers, with reflections on being an art dealer in the late 1960s in which he describes, among many other things, the “act of faith that I performed when I traded the Kenny Price for the John Baldessari.”

Courtesy Art Issues Press