Throughout his five-decade career, writer and critic Dave Hickey has blasted a niche for himself as one of the art world’s loudest voices, chiming from his various outposts in New York, LA, then Nashville, Las Vegas and for the last several years, Santa Fe.

In 2001, Hickey snatched the Genius award for his media and cultural criticism, much of which has been anthologized into collections like The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty and Pirates and Farmers. More recently, he’s been writing on Facebook and Twitter, @RealDaveHickey, such that over the last five years he’s amassed a tremendous archive of social media musings. These were recently consolidated into two books, Dust Bunnies and Wasted Words, both edited by art historian Julia Friedman. Last December, just weeks after his 75th birthday, Hickey also published his latest collection, 25 Women: Essays on Their Art.

My introduction to Hickey was his classic 1997 book Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, an anthology which gets into everything from basketball’s zone defense to Liberace to Hank Williams. Imagine a Ronda Rousey of criticism – he tries to hit that hard. The entertainment value is second to none. The downside is that he’s not Rousey, he’s Hickey: a dude with gray hair and often grayish ideas.

Physically, Hickey suggests something between a goateed pirate, a professor and an ogre mage. When I meet him outside the SITE gallery in Santa Fe, he is wearing black sweats and a black Calloway golf windbreaker. He is welcoming and warmish, with a bit of southern flair. After he finishes signing a few books to be sold in the gallery’s gift shop, we shuffle off to a backroom to talk for two hours.

I have to say: there’s something extraordinarily earnest about Hickey’s endeavor. Which is impressive. He’s really into his own stories, so he sounds, at times, like that guy who was there in the 60s and wants to tell you about the Dead over bean salad at a potluck. The fact that he actually was friends with David Bowie, Hunter Thompson and Ellsworth Kelly, that Robert Mapplethorpe probably really did take him to the Spike to watch men fisting, that his cocaine tales about Nashville and heroin tales about Lou Reed and meth tales about the Salton Sea are all basically true – all this only serves the storyteller’s seduction. He’s possessed with a spell-caster’s charm. He’s got a voice and he’s got an eye. He smokes a lot, and does that little flick-of-the-wrist trick wherein a Marlboro magically pops out the end of his pack, which, if you’re smoking too, he offers generously.

When I asked my girlfriend why anyone should care about Hickey today she said because he demonstrates an “archaic model of patriarchal inference in culture”, then added, “and I still really like him”.

When I asked Dave if he had anything else to add at the end of our interview he said: “Don’t make me sound like an asshole.”

Dave Hickey: About five years ago I retired from the art world. Three or four times per year I go to New York and I go see art. Then I go home. I don’t interact with the art world any more. When I look at a work of art, I don’t know who the artists are. That’s quite a relief. I don’t really have much of an interest in artists as people. I’m interested in them as artists.

I feel like your new book, 25 Women Artists, is in many ways about the people, and your relationship to them – and not just their art.

It is. And I felt that was necessary to locate these women, who were mostly kind of out of fashion. Also these are people that I really like. You couldn’t really like Joan Mitchell, of course, because she was so noisy and aggressive. But I liked her anyways. I just liked her ’tude. She was a tough babe. And I think she was the best painter of her generation.

So how come you dipped back into the art world with 25 Women Artists?

It’s really simple. I write a whole lot of essays. It’s about 40% women, 40% gays, 20% my friends from the beach. But most of the writing I do about male art is reproduced. It comes out in London, it comes out in Korea, it comes out in China. I looked at this list of things that hadn’t been reprinted – 90% of them were women. I thought, “Oh, shit, I’ll do a book about women artists. That would be so cool.” Turns out it’s a little more serious than that in the present world. Look up some of the reviews. Like in Hyperallergic or even in the New York Times Book Review.

It wasn’t favorable?

It was, “Boy, I wish our friends could learn to write as well as Dave does.” They think that writing well is something you learn. You don’t learn it. It is an adverse reactivity.

You seem committed to this idea that “talent” is a thing. You’ve either got it, or you don’t.

Well, I think charisma is real. You know? I met Richard Burton once and he’s a little twerp. But he just had this sssssshhhhh. And I spent two weeks in Muscle Shoals once when Rod Stewart was recording with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. And I like Rodney a great deal. He’s really a great guy and he gave me a cool scarf which I have since lost. If you’re in a room with Rod Stewart, he’s in Technicolor and you’re in black and white. He really has that. I’ve known other people who had charisma. Andy [Warhol] actually had charisma, although he didn’t know it. You know? That’s what attracted him to Marilyn and the stars. To bequeath charisma. Waylon Jennings was charismatic. It’s what Donald Trump has. You have to be able to just walk in there and control the room. I guess sometimes it’s physical. Tim Duncan has charisma.

Tim Duncan of the Spurs?

Yeah. I was so sorry the Spurs lost this year – dammit! I met him at some parties when I used to live down there. In basketball, the most charismatic players I know were Timmy and Hakeem Olajuwon. If you look out there, in the post, and everybody seems to be going fast except for Hakeem, who’s going as slow as shit –and then he scores? That’s charisma. It’s control. It’s like this hand here, this foot here, this foot here – slam. As Millie Jackson said: “They tried to keep me out but I got on in there with my leg.” You know? “Stuck my leg through the door.”

So many creative people, and especially men, feel entitled to an audience. I’m guilty of this, too.

Well, yeah. I can think of about 500 architects who have never built a building. I know a lot of artists who have never shown any art – what the fuck is that about? My rule is: You have to have done something before you can be said to have done something. The title of artist or architect or musician needs to somehow be earned. A lot of these 25 women are like that. They did a lot and felt privileged to do it. Felt no hesitation. Just running through the art world there are people who do things and people who don’t.

You seem pretty able to talk about a wide variety of subjects with a certain amount of expertise.

Except feminism. I’m not a woman! And I wish that I was … I remember I had to give a commencement address at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] once. When I had on my suit I looked like Dick Cheney, when I put on my robe thing I looked like the last pope.

How do you think your life might’ve been different if you’d been a woman?

Uh, not much. You know. I would have done OK. I like women, I prefer their company. I’m such a caretaker with women. I just want to take care of them.

What’s actually going on in your body and mind when you’re looking at a piece of art?

I’m really never looking at a piece of art. Usually I’m walking through a gallery or a museum and I walk until something stops me. And if it stops me I look at it. I’m not a big fan of “reluctant virgin art”, which you have to look at for 20 minutes in order to figure out what it is. I like that kind of BANG. I look at it and I relate it to what I have seen.

What was the last piece of good art that stopped you in that way?

Just the other day at Hauser & Wirth’s show in LA, those five Lee Bontecou’s in the front room are about as good as art gets. You know what I mean? Those stitched-together things. I hadn’t seen that many of Lee’s works for many, many years. When I knew her in New York she was a very quiet, shy person. She reminded you of one of those moms on a TV sitcom, like Beaver’s mom – very quiet, orderly person.

And then when you’re looking you start building a narrative …

Yeah, then I think about it. I still have no ideas what all those holes are about in Lee’s work. If I got a job I would sit around and think about it until I knew. But I thought they were just majestic. And those works alone – along with Lynda Benglis’s – should improve the status of the quality of art in LA by themselves. I can remember the first time I saw one of those [Benglis works] in a gallery in Dallas. I just thought, “Yeah! All right. I can worry about that forever.” With Lynda and with Lee you’re impressed by the sort of investment. Exactly how much time and trouble and money it took to put it all together. Also, Lee figured out how to do tragic abjection in art, before anyone else. She just did it right out of the box, you know? I would like one but it would it would make me very sad probably.

To have in your house?

Yeah. They’re sad works. You know? And I don’t like anything that’s brown.