Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Artfully examining some new art books

Friday, March 3, 2000 | 9:35 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books and magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him dickens@vegas.com or 990-2446.

Reading about art will always run a sorry second to actually looking at it, except for a few masochistic theorists and careerist academics. Standing before my first Jackson Pollock, I understood one thing: not the painting itself, certainly, a glorious whirl of galactic splatters; that stuff's waaaay over my little head. I did, however, realize that nothing I could read about the painting -- not 100,000 words of explanation and context -- would compare to simply standing there absorbed in it.

Of course, that built-in futility doesn't stop writers or publishers from trying; it may even spur them on. Which brings us to three recent books either by Las Vegans or thematically appropriate to the city.

The heftiest, in terms of actual heft, is "The Art of Gambling Through the Ages," the pride of the local Huntington Press ($65, free if you're a book reviewer). It's a coffee-table volume featuring 139 artworks that address in some way gambling or notions of chance.

As you'd expect with an art book organized around a theme this specific, the contents are uneven. They range from works by old masters to abstract expressionists to, gak, those dogs playing poker. LeRoy Neiman, the grand old master of casino painting, is over-represented with 10 pieces. The remainder are sometimes quite striking (luminous 17th century paintings by Georges de La Tour), sometimes whimsical (Dwight Davidson's ceramic sculptures of frogs and cattle gambling), sometimes rather banal (plenty of others).

The text is often lamentably short on art-history stuff, settling instead for capsule histories of the games depicted -- an OK strategy if the book was about the games, less so when it's supposed to be about the art.

That said, it still makes for some enjoyable leafing-through. And, on occasion, the lack of artistic context can be fun. What are we to make of, say, one Hans Haem, the artist behind a 1970 sketch of a dice-rolling pianist, when the book not only tells us "biographical information about Hans Haem could not be obtained," but also, "whereabouts of (the) work unknown"? Is he a one-hit wonder or some obscure genius whose lost art constitutes a largely unknown series of great pieces?

And, if nothing else, at least now we know who to blame for those damn poker-playing dogs (Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, who painted them around 1870).

Of the three books, Las Vegas-based art critic Libby Lumpkin's swings the heaviest weight intellectually. "Deep Design: Nine Little Art Histories" (Art Issues Press, $17.95) takes on familiar iconography (the yellow smiley face, the circle-and-slash prohibition symbol, the Las Vegas showgirl) and challenges accepted notions of feminist readings of art. One perceptive reviewer dubbed Lumpkin a "renegade formalist," meaning she's more interested in how the formal qualities of art -- such as composition -- function, rather than engaging in trendy political or academic critiques.

This is bona fide art criticism; bring a fresh brain. Lumpkin's sprightly prose style helps the medicine go down, but it's still knotty stuff. Those unschooled in the lingo of art discourse should keep a dictionary of terms handy.

Then there's "Stardumb," a curious little volume by UNLV art professor Dave Hickey (Mr. Libby Lumpkin, by the way). Put out by Artspace Books, a boutique publisher in Northern California, it pairs 12 short essays by Hickey with Zodiac-themed drawings by artist John DeFazio (once a visiting artist at UNLV).

Hickey based each piece on an astrological sign. Creating fictional characters from the personality traits attributed to each symbol, he devised what he calls "little art-world vignettes," short-short stories set in the milieus of high culture.

Sounds contrived, but Hickey brings it off. The pieces are character-driven sketches ranging in mood from satirical to funny to touchingly sad. In one, he mockingly details the hollow lives of an art-world couple whose energies are spent parsing the invitation lists for their parties. In another, a gay man recalls a deceased lover with joy and sadness. A third, constructed as a mock interview, is a hilarious send-up of fashionable art theorizing (no dictionary of terms required).

Never mind that the characters supposedly refer to real art-world folk -- I didn't recognize them and you won't either. Never mind, too, that the writing is unlike the maverick criticism that has lately made Hickey a media darling, with admiring profiles in Texas Monthly, the New York Times and U.S. News and World Report. For that Dave Hickey, check out his essay collection "Air Guitar," which I heavily recommend.

No, this is Hickey as pure wordsmith, unrestrained by any critical agenda, just spinning out modern fables. It's a lovely little book, a quick but appealing read. Good luck finding it, however; Amazon.com is your best bet.

Reading matters

With Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, GQ's March cover cuts back on the cheesecake quotient of its last few issues (a nearly naked Tyra Banks on the cover of January's edition, Penelope Cruz in a bikini top on February's).

The issue's theme is "Leading Men," and it gives us stories on Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler and Christopher Walken, surrounded by a batch of cool entertainment world pieces: an assessment of the Brat Pack all these years later, a profile of Hollywood powerbroker David Geffen, a tough piece taking Robin Williams to task for the halo he's been wearing in recent movies, and a chunk of fiction by James Ellroy about the seedy Hollywood of the past. All for a mere $3.