Dave Hickey Quote

As my friend Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has argued persuasively, there is an element of positivity in the visible world, and in color particularly, that totally eludes the historicity of language, with its protocols of absence and polarity. The color red, as an attribute of the world, is always there. It is something other than the absence of yellow and blue--and, thus, when that red becomes less red, it becomes one or the other. It never exists in a linguistic condition of degradation or excess that must necessarily derive from our expectations.

Dave Hickey

As my friend Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has argued persuasively, there is an element of positivity in the visible world, and in color particularly, that totally eludes the historicity of language, with its protocols of absence and polarity. The color red, as an attribute of the world, is always there. It is something other than the absence of yellow and blue--and, thus, when that red becomes less red, it becomes one or the other. It never exists in a linguistic condition of degradation or excess that must necessarily derive from our expectations.

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About Dave Hickey

David Hickey (December 5, 1938 – November 12, 2021) was an American art critic who wrote for many American publications including Rolling Stone, ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, Harper's Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He was nicknamed "The Bad Boy of Art Criticism" and "The Enfant Terrible of Art Criticism". He had been professor of English at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and distinguished professor of criticism for the MFA program in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of New Mexico.