Dave Hickey is an unusual icon in the art world, a critic who flatly refuses to embrace either academic jargon, or what he calls the “Art Brit-tabloid sleaze” now in vogue as a way to supposedly reach young people. According to Hickey, art’s problems are just society’s problems writ small. “Art’s just not that important or that fashionable anymore. It’s not cool. Not only that, it’s not intellectually serious… What do you do with an art world in which the normative work of art is a giant C-print of three Germans standing beside a mailbox? What’s that? Stop it, please.”