LG Williams Explains "The Pain!" To Professor Dave Hickey
This letter to Dave Hickey is a volcanic complaint about exclusion, obscurity, surfing, and the injustice of being omitted from art-critical attention. Williams's profanity is not incidental excess; it is the tonal equivalent of a career trapped between Pacific paradise and art-world invisibility. The letter begs, threatens, flatters, and ridicules Hickey all at once, demanding inclusion in the critic's next essay regardless of theme, taste, or logic. Its central wound is recognizably art historical: how can a supposedly serious critical culture miss the artist who believes himself to be operating at the highest pitch of "meta-action"? As Samizdat, it is both pathetic and triumphant--a self-authored howl from the margins that turns nonrecognition into an artwork called The Pain.
- DATE:
- November 20, 2004
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Letter / Open Letter
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Dave Hickey; Wally Hedrick; Heisenberg; Walter Hopps; Martin Heidegger
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- University of Nevada Las Vegas; Linc Art; Lemon; City Lights; CafePress
- KEYWORDS:
- meta-action unrecognized; exclusion from Hickey as wound; profanity as tonal equivalent; Pacific paradise and art-world invisibility; begging threatening flattering at once; art criticism missing the obvious; pain as letter form