There is a level of surprise that reallocates itself again and again while reading Air Guitar, considering it is announced to be "art criticism." The stories and lessons that ride along side the theories and methodologies of Dave Hickey are so immersed in his personal life and understanding of the way art and culture work, that it almost seems non-critical, but maybe rather analytical or philosophical in a sense. Needless to say, I am surprised at how much I am enjoying reading an art criticism book (one that breaches Liberace, "good jazz," psychedelics, and the ethics of cartoon violence all within the first half of the book).

The first essay to cause me to laugh out loud in the library was the story of "My Weimer," about Dave's developmental ideas on theatre and his stature as an artist. Being taught that the arts will inevitably be run by queers, silly women, and Jews was oddly ironic to my life growing up theatrically in the arts. Hickey tells us about his lesson taught from his bothered, Jewish theatre professor who gave lessons on masculinity versus commerce, and how commercial culture had been effected by the two world wars, and the fates of who was left to run such a thing. "...between the tragic condition of the heroic artist and the ludicrous spectacle of the effeminate sellout," was the basis of Hickeys life-long dilemma as an artist. Since the masculine heterosexuals were all busy fighting off in the idiotic wars, the arts were left up to "Queers and women and a bunch of old Jews!" The life of being separate (eventually) from the world of masculinity came from being involved in the arts, which was not something quarrelling governments cared about in times of war.

Eventually Hickeys professor, Herr Weimer, warned his students of the "muscle-boy Aryans" coming to treat culture as culture, just as business is business. They would potentially create their muscle-boy art and try to turn the world of arts masculine. Although I found this comedic in it's intention, it got me wondering to the actuality of this story. I grew up around queers, women, and artsy Jew friends, and I joined on it with it, working against the masculine war effort to be an artist and revel in my own involvement with that.

What would happen to art if we didn't have wars? Would the masculine muscle-boy Aryans become artists and reformat the art world? Or would they find something else masculine to indulge themselves into? Since reading this I am becoming more and more interested in the whole muscle-boy masculinity and its massive absence.

-Colin Self