Robert Hughes

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born

July 28, 1938 in Sydney, Australia

gender

male

genre

Arts & Photography, History

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Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970. He was educated at St Ignatius' College, Riverview before going on to study arts and then architecture at the University of Sydney. At university, Hughes associated with the Sydney "Push" – a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Among the group were Germaine Greer and Clive James. Hughes, an aspiring artist and poet, abandoned his university endeavours to become first a cartoonist and then an art critic for the Sydney periodical The Observer, edited by Donald Horne. Around this time he wrote a history of Australian painting, titled The Art of Australia, which is still considered to...more Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970. He was educated at St Ignatius' College, Riverview before going on to study arts and then architecture at the University of Sydney. At university, Hughes associated with the Sydney "Push" – a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Among the group were Germaine Greer and Clive James. Hughes, an aspiring artist and poet, abandoned his university endeavours to become first a cartoonist and then an art critic for the Sydney periodical The Observer, edited by Donald Horne. Around this time he wrote a history of Australian painting, titled The Art of Australia, which is still considered to be an important work. It was published in 1966. Hughes was also briefly involved in the original Sydney version of Oz magazine, and wrote art criticism for The Nation and The Sunday Mirror.

Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London, England (1965) where he wrote for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Observer, among others, and contributed to the London version of Oz. In 1970 he obtained the position of art critic for TIME magazine and he moved to New York. He quickly established himself in the United States as an influential art critic.In 1975, he and Don Brady provided the narration for the film Protected, a documentary showing what life was like for Indigenous Australians on Palm Island.

In 1980, the BBC broadcast The Shock of the New, Hughes's television series on the development of modern art since the Impressionists. It was accompanied by a book of the same name; its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised. In 1987, The Fatal Shore, Hughes's study of the British penal colonies and early European settlement of Australia, became an international best-seller.

Hughes provided commentary on the work of artist Robert Crumb in parts of the 1994 film Crumb, calling Crumb "the American Breughel". His 1997 television series American Visions reviewed the history of American art since the Revolution. He was again dismissive of much recent art; this time, sculptor Jeff Koons was subjected to criticism. Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore (2000) was a series musing on modern Australia and Hughes's relationship with it. Hughes's 2002 documentary on the painter Francisco Goya, Goya: Crazy Like a Genius, was broadcast on the first night of the BBC's domestic digital service. Hughes created a one hour update to The Shock of the New. Titled The New Shock of the New, the program aired first in 2004. Hughes published the first volume of his memoirs, Things I Didn’t Know, in 2006.(less)

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Books by Robert Hughes

Average rating: 3.96 · 5,716 ratings · 380 reviews · 74 distinct works

	The Fatal Shore: The Epic Of Australia's Founding 4.00 avg rating — 2,100 ratings — published 1986 — 18 editions	My rating:
	The Shock of the New 3.92 avg rating — 2,006 ratings — published 1981 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Goya 4.01 avg rating — 546 ratings — published 2003 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists 3.92 avg rating — 178 ratings — 6 editions	My rating:
	Barcelona 3.88 avg rating — 172 ratings — published 1992 — 11 editions	My rating:
	Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America 3.77 avg rating — 151 ratings — published 1993 — 6 editions	My rating:
	American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America 4.21 avg rating — 119 ratings — 6 editions	My rating:
	Lucian Freud Paintings by Robert Hughes, Lucian Freud 4.32 avg rating — 98 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History 3.64 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 2011 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Things I Didn't Know 3.70 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 2006 — 8 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Robert Hughes

“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.”
― Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New

tags: art

11 people liked it

“What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.”
― Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New

tags: 1980 , art , avant-garde , confidence , culture , ebullience , idealism , metaphor

7 people liked it

“Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre”
― Robert Hughes

5 people liked it

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