Appreciation: Art critic Dave Hickey was known for his blazing and cantankerous wit

Dave Hickey was a writer. He wrote short stories, fiction and journalism — essays about Liberace, the mechanics of zone defense on the playing field and what made loud, brash, vulgar Las Vegas America's most American city.

Sometimes he wrote about music — country and rock 'n' roll — and sometimes he wrote the songs themselves. And he wrote about art, which is how I got to know him in the 1980s.

Lots of smart people write smart things about art but nobody was a better writer than Dave. Hickey died Nov. 12 at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, succumbing three weeks shy of his 83rd birthday after a long and difficult struggle with heart disease. He is survived by his wife, Libby Lumpkin, a feminist art historian and professor at the University of New Mexico, and a younger brother, Michael, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (A sister, Sarah Henderson, predeceased him.)

Two books published by Art Issues