Part 4. Dave Hickey and Beauty.

Background
- Text from the article comes from a book “Invisible Dragon” published around 1993, which he pulled off the market when people got so angry about it.
- When he heard it was selling on ebay for about $500, Hickey thought it was ridiculous so he allowed it to be published
- Writings are largely centered around Robert Mapplethorpe, National Endowment Fund issue (series of photographs created a huge controversy)

What is beauty?
- “Beauty is not a doing thing. The Beautiful is a thing. To images, beauty is the agency that causes visual pleasure in the beholder” (David Hickey)
- What do we think this means/how do we feel about it?
- Maybe it means beauty is about our relationship to the thing: so that it’s a process or an agency – not inherent in the object, but not post-reflection – somewhere in between (“comes before our analytical reflective engagement thing”)
- Object is thus not arbitrary, and our initial response to things as beautiful doesn’t necessarily change
- It seems to come down to the degree of pleasure that one has in engaging with something


How do notions of context affect beauty?
- What happens when we put the subject (the central artistic object) that we are all relating to in a different context (i.e. idea of it retaining its cosmetic superstructure, but when is object obsolete?)
- Idea that the thing in and of itself doesn’t change, but somehow the thing in and of itself does (the work is not in the physical attributes itself)
- What happens when an object or piece “transcends time”? Does the object lose its value if it loses its political relevance? It retains its beauty.
- Doesn’t context require some kind of knowledge?
- How much is a gut response to what is “beautiful” a socialized response (question of beauty as nature or nurture)?
- Hickey asserts that language is cultural and rhetoric is a technique/craft -- so maybe he is not trying to deal with a universal definition of beauty, but is creating something “beautiful” for people with the same points of reference
- Who’s to say that response to Mapplethorpe photos in 1983 was any different than to the painting during the reformation?
- How do we deal with the fact that there isn’t a standard notion of beauty?
- Mapplethorpe seems to be appropriating beauty and directing our gaze towards the way we perceive beauty

Beauty, Argument, & Mapplethorpe Photographs.
- Two different functions of art: academies/education world teaches that art should be a critique of mainstream (is sanctioned); beautiful celebration of marginal culture/practice, etc (is not sanctioned)
- In the case of the photos: an acknowledgement of its own controversy and corruption would have somehow required less litigation; power is in its beauty, not in its content (rough, dirty, grimy, etc)
- It was the unapologetic attitude of artist towards his work that made it so contentious (it does not ask forgiveness form its audience)
- Declaration that the work is “corrupt” is actually the antithesis to beauty of them
- Mapplethorpe was putting his own world out there – did he know it was going to be controversial, and was it an “argument”?
- Can you express your idea of beauty with making an “argument” for it?

Beauty, Advertising Culture, and Art.
- Could we have even had this discussion before advertising culture, which uses what is “cool” or “beautiful” to manipulate us into buying things (making argument invisible)?
- Perhaps:
- Hickey asserts that art has given away beauty to capitalist world - and that that’s a bad idea!
- Perhaps for a while we have aspired to make art stripped of all beauty in order to respond to/get away from advertising (didn’t want art that looked like advertising)
- Have we now developed enough criticality that we can reintroduce beauty?

Where does an image’s argument fit in? Can beauty and critique coexist?
- An image and its argument: there’s this question of what it looks like versus what it means (where is the argument?)
- We have learned to critique the beautiful, we have learned to distrust it
- Perhaps outside of its argument, an object can be beautiful but not vital?
- Perhaps the problem in advertising (versus art) is with the hiding of the argument?
If I deny I am making an argument, it makes it very difficult for you to argue back with me? However, if I acknowledge that I am making an argument, I emancipate you to disagree with me?
- Question: when we are engaging with something beautiful is it on some level an uncritical knowing or outside of knowledge?
- Perhaps we tried to get rid of beautiful thing that “obscures the truth” (we had this idea that in order to move away from advertising, mass media, influence, etc, that we had to get rid of beauty)
- Why? Maybe because the dominant story of beauty is an “uncritical one” (so to become critical, people have avoided beauty) – article as call for not needing to avoid beauty
- How much pleasure can we have and still be critical?
- Why do we have to get rid of pleasure? Why can’t we have generosity with beauty and then have our gaze re-focused (perhaps this is part of the pendulum swinging backwards)?
- Beauty = virtuosity of performance?
- It was suggested that the article feels hopeful because it means we can create beautiful things that still have some kind of a function