Perfect Wave: More Essays on Art and Democracy

Veteran art critic Hickey (25 Women) delivers another poignant and masterful collection of essays. In each selection, he critically and humorously contemplates cultural zeitgeists and the essence of good art in music, books, paintings, and architecture. His razor-sharp insight and witty prose make for an entertaining read, whether he is earnestly praising Disney World’s animatronic gallery of U.S. presidents or knowledgeably discoursing on 16th-century Venetian architecture. Some of his subjects include jazz photographer William Claxton, Susan Sontag (to whom he pays an endearing tribute), and Norman Rockwell. He easily digresses from the personal to the critical and is untiringly eloquent but never pretentious. In “Wonderful Shoes,” an irreverent essay mostly about the power of transgressing repressive cultural norms with personal accessories such as shoes or hair dye, he argues that “the protean array of trivial things, real and imaginary, for which we all reach outward defines us more profoundly than all our moral certainties.” While his prose is charming and at times aphoristic, Hickey is always serious when challenging the status quo or defending the cultural innovators who, in his view, have realized art’s potential as a medium for beauty, democracy, and unabashed self-expression. (Nov.)