Writer Matthew Collings turns his attention to the New York art scene, and applies the same keen, unpretentious intelligence and perceptive wit that made Blimey! such a resounding success. Here, at last, is an art critic who neither inflates his language nor "dumbs down"his observations-Collings has created a new, immensely readable but no less thoughtful way to write about art and art makers. From Warhol himself to the critics, artists, and dealers in the sixties, to super-brats of the eighties like Koons and Schnabel, and right up to the young players of the nineties – all of them come to vivid life on the page, and are as believable, human, vulnerable and monstrous (often all of these at the same time) as the characters in a first-rate novel.

'"It Hurts" ships the bemused Brit across the Atlantic. Collings capably hammers together reportage, assessment, and a lot of dish and adeptly breezes away the fog of blather that accumulates around art in an environment nauseous with pseudo-academic jargon and the cult of celebrity."
DOM AMMIRATI, Newsweek

Blimey! Matthew Collings's book on the London art world was described by the Guardian's critic as 'hilarious and horrible, intelligent and frightening, the book the art world deserves'. It Hurts, Collings's new book on the New York art scene, could be described as the kind of art book that we mere mortals deserve. It's full of amusing stories about the bitching artists (they are all here - from Warhol to Koons to Johns and back again), critics and dealers, that Collings has met.
GARY PHILLIPS, The Observer, 3 January, 1999