Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO (28 July 19386 August 2012) was an Australian-born

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

, writer, and producer of

television documentaries Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. *Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

. He was described in 1997 by Robert Boynton of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as "the most famous art critic in the world." Hughes earned widespread recognition for his book and television series on

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

, ''

The Shock of the New ''The Shock of the New'' is an eight-part documentary television series about the development of modern art written and presented in 1980 by Robert Hughes for the BBC, in association with Time-Life Films. It was produced by Lorna Pegram, who als ...

'', and for his longstanding position as art critic with ''TIME'' magazine. He is also known for his best seller ''

The Fatal Shore ''The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding'' by Robert Hughes is a history of the early years of British colonisation of Australia, and especially the history and social effects of Britain's convict transportation system. It also ad ...

'' (1986), a study of the British convict system in early Australian history. Known for his contentious critiques of art and artists, Hughes was generally conservative in his tastes, although he did not belong to a particular philosophical camp. His writing was noted for its power and elegance.

Early life

Hughes was born in Sydney, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father,

Geoffrey Forrest Hughes Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, (12 July 1895 – 13 September 1951) was an Australian aviator and flying ace of the First World War. He was credited with 11 aerial victories, and won a Military Cross for his valour. After a postwar award of the Air ...

, was a pilot in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12. His mother was Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal. His elder brother was Australian politician Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes,Duggan, Paul
Robert Hughes—a lawyer's farewell
at pauldugganbarrister.com, 9 August 2012. Retrieved 1 March 2017 the father of former Sydney Lord Mayor

Lucy Turnbull Lucinda Mary Turnbull Officer of the Order of Australia, AO (née Hughes; born 30 March 1958) is an Australian businesswoman, philanthropist, and former Local government in Australia, local government politician. She served on the Sydney City ...

, the wife of former Australian Prime Minister

Malcolm Turnbull Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician and businessman who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Turnbull grad ...

. He had another brother Geoffrey and one sister, Constance. Growing up in Rose Bay, Sydney, Hughes was educated at

Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview Saint Ignatius' College Riverview is an Australian independent single-sex primary and secondary day and boarding school for boys, conducted in the Jesuit tradition, located in Riverview, a small suburb located on the Lane Cove River on the ...

before studying arts and then architecture at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

. At university, he associated with the Sydney "Push" – a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Among the group were

Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literatu ...

and

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.

Career

As an art critic

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 ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'', edited by

Donald Horne Donald Richmond Horne (26 December 1921 – 8 September 2005) was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals, from the 1960s until his death. Horne was a prol ...

. Hughes was briefly involved in the original Sydney version of ''Oz'' magazine and wrote art criticism for ''

Nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

'' and ''

The Sunday Mirror The ''Sunday Mirror'' is the Sunday sister paper of the ''Daily Mirror''. It began life in 1915 as the ''Sunday Pictorial'' and was renamed the ''Sunday Mirror'' in 1963. In 2016 it had an average weekly circulation of 620,861, dropping marke ...

''. In 1961, while still a student, Hughes was caught up in controversy when a number of his classmates demonstrated in a student newspaper article that he had published plagiarised poetry by

Terence Tiller Terence Rogers Tiller (19 September 1916 – 24 December 1987) was an English poet and radio producer. Early life, poet Tiller was born in Truro, Cornwall and educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith.Obituary, ''The Times'', 5 January 198 ...

and others, and a drawing by

Leonard Baskin Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as well as founder of the Gehenna Press (1942–2000). One of America's first fine arts presses, it went on to become "one of the most imp ...

. Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London in 1965, where he wrote for ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'', ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', and ''

'', among others, and contributed to the London version of ''Oz''. In 1970 he was appointed art critic for ''

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine and moved to New York, where he soon became an influential voice. In 1966 Hughes published a history of

Australian painting Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from Prehistory of Australia, prehistoric times to the present. This includes Indigenous Australian art, Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier Method, Atelier, ...

titled ''The Art of Australia'', still considered an important work. Hughes wrote and narrated the BBC eight-part series ''

'' (1980) on the development of

since the

Impressionists Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

. It was produced and in part directed by

Lorna Pegram Lorna Pegram born Lorna Gladys Hurst Woods (October 25, 1926 – May 16, 1993) was a British television producer and novelist. She produced '' The Shock of the New'', a series about the development of modern art for the BBC. Pegram wrote seven ...

. It was accompanied by a book with the same title. John O'Connor of ''

'' said, "Agree or disagree, you will not be bored. Mr. Hughes has a disarming way of being provocative." Hughes's TV series ''American Visions'' (1997) reviewed the history of

American art Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial arc ...

since the

Revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

. Hughes's documentary on

Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

, ''Goya: Crazy Like a Genius'' (2002), was broadcast on the first night of the new British domestic digital service,

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

. He created a one-hour update to ''The Shock of the New'', titled ''The New Shock of the New'', which first aired in 2004. He published the first volume of his memoirs, ''Things I Didn’t Know'', in 2006.

As a journalist and historian

Hughes and

Harold Hayes Harold Thomas Pace Hayes (April 18, 1926 – April 5, 1989), editor of '' Esquire'' magazine from 1963 to 1973, was a main architect of the New Journalism movement. Biography Born April 18, 1926, in Elkin, North Carolina, Harold Hayes earned an u ...

were recruited in 1978 to anchor the new

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

(US)

newsmagazine A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories, in greater depth than do newspapers or new ...

20/20 Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal ...

''. His only broadcast, on 6 June 1978, proved so controversial that, less than a week later, ABC News president

Roone Arledge Roone Pinckney Arledge Jr. (July 8, 1931 – December 5, 2002) was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise t ...

terminated the contracts of both men, replacing them with veteran TV host

Hugh Downs Hugh Malcolm Downs (February 14, 1921July 1, 2020) was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer. A regular t ...

. Hughes's book ''

'' followed in 1987. A study of the British penal colonies and early European settlement of Australia, it became an international best-seller. During the late 1990s, Hughes was a prominent supporter of the

Australian Republican Movement The Australian Republic Movement (ARM) is a non-party-partisan organisation campaigning for Australia to become a republic. ARM and its supporters have promoted various models of a republic including parliamentary republic and it is, again, revi ...

. ''Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore'' (2000) was a series musing on modern Australia and Hughes's relationship with it. During production, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal road accident.

Personal life

Hughes met his first wife, Danne Emerson, in London in 1967. Together they became involved in the

counterculture of the 1960s The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...

, exploring drug use and sexual freedom. They divorced in 1981; she died of a brain tumour in 2003. Their son, Danton, Hughes's only child, was named after the French revolutionary

Georges Danton Georges Jacques Danton (; 26 October 1759 – 5 April 1794) was a French lawyer and a leading figure in the French Revolution. He became a deputy to the Paris Commune, presided in the Cordeliers district, and visited the Jacobin club. In Augus ...

. Danton Hughes, a sculptor, committed suicide in April 2001; he was found by his partner, fashion designer

Jenny Kee Jenny Margaret Kee, (born 24 January 1947) is an Australian fashion designer. Early life Kee was born on 24 January 1947 in Bondi, New South Wales to a Chinese father and a sixth-generation Australian mother of Italian-English descent. Kee's ...

, with whom he had been in a long-term relationship. Robert Hughes later wrote: "I miss Danton and always will, although we had been miserably estranged for years and the pain of his loss has been somewhat blunted by the passage of time". Hughes was married to his second wife, Victoria Whistler, from 1981 until a divorce in 1996. In 1999, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal car accident south of

Broome, Western Australia Broome, also known as Rubibi by the Yawuru people, is a coastal pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, north of Perth. In the the population was recorded as 14,660. It is the largest town in the Kimberley reg ...

. He was returning from a fishing trip and driving on the wrong side of the road when he collided head on with another car carrying three occupants. He was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

in critical condition. Hughes was in a coma for five weeks after the crash. In a 2000 court hearing, Hughes's defence barrister alleged that the occupants of the other car had been transporting illicit drugs at the time of the accident and were at fault. In 2003 Hughes pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm and was fined A$2,500. Hughes recounts the story of the accident and his recovery in the first chapter of his 2006 memoir ''Things I Didn't Know''. In 2001, Hughes wed his third wife, the American artist and

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

Doris Downes. "Apart from being a talented painter, she saved my life, my emotional stability, such as it is", he said.

Death

After a long illness, Hughes died at Calvary Hospital in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

, New York City, on 6 August 2012, with his wife at his bedside. He was also survived by two stepsons from his wife's previous marriage, Freeborn Garrettson Jewett IV and Fielder Douglas Jewett; his brothers, Tom and Geoffrey Hughes; a sister, Constance Crisp; and many nieces and nephews.

Assessment

When ''The Shock of the New'' was proposed to the BBC, television programmers were sceptical that a journalist could properly follow the aristocratic tone of

Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...

, whose ''

Civilisation A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of State (polity), a state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and Symbol, symbolic systems of communication beyond natural language, natur ...

'' had been so successful. ''The Shock of the New'' proved to be a popular and critical success: it has been assessed "much the best synoptic introduction to modern art ever written", taking as its premise the vitality gained by modern art when it ceded the need to replicate nature in favour of a more direct expression of human experience and emotion. Hughes's explanations of modern art benefited from the coherence of his judgments, and were marked by his ability to summarise the essential qualities of his subject. Whether positive or negative, his judgments were enthusiastic. He championed London painters like

Frank Auerbach Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...

and

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

, helping to popularise the latter in the United States, and wrote with unabashed admiration for

and

Pierre Bonnard Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...

. By contrast Hughes was dismissive of much

postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...

and

neo-expressionism Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early- postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called ''Transavantgarde'', ''Junge Wilde'' or ''Neue Wilden'' ('The new wild ones'; 'Ne ...

, of painters like

Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been ...

and

David Salle David Salle (born September 28, 1952; last name pronounced "Sally") is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He earn ...

, as well as the vicissitudes of a money-fuelled art market. While his reviews expressed

antipathy Antipathy is a dislike for something or somebody, the opposite of sympathy. While antipathy may be induced by experience, it sometimes exists without a rational cause-and-effect explanation being present to the individuals involved. Thus, the ori ...

for the

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

, he was beholden neither to any theory nor ideology, and managed to provoke both ends of the political spectrum. He distrusted novelty in art for its own sake, yet he was also disdainful of a conservative aesthetic that avoided risk. He famously labelled contemporary Australian indigenous art as "the last great art movement of the 20th century". Hughes, according to

Adam Gopnik Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for ''The New Yorker,'' to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism since 1986. He is the author of nine books ...

, was drawn to work that was rough-hewn, "craft attempted with passion." Hughes's critical prose, vivid in both praise and indignation, has been compared to that of

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...

and

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

. "His prose", according to a colleague, "was lithe, muscular and fast as a bunch of fives. He was incapable of writing the jargon of the art world, and consequently was treated by its mandarins with fear and loathing." In different moods he could write that " Schnabel’s work is to painting what Stallone’s is to acting: a lurching display of oily pectorals," as well as conclude that

Antoine Watteau Jean-Antoine Watteau (, , ; baptised October 10, 1684died July 18, 1721) Alsavailablevia Oxford Art Online (subscription needed). was a French painter and draughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, a ...

"was a connoisseur of the unplucked string, the immobility before the dance, the moment that falls between departure and nostalgia." Artist Jakob Zaaiman has criticised Hughes's grasp of contemporary art, arguing that he was unable to see beyond a narrow and blinkered classical aestheticism, and so failed to appreciate its theatrical and narrative possibilities. This was said to be particularly evident in his views of

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Honours

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bibliography

Books

* * * * * * * * * * * * * (Condensed version of ''Barcelona'') * * *

Critical studies and reviews

Biographies

* Anderson, Patricia (2009). ''Robert Hughes: The Australian Years'', Sydney: Pandora Press; * Britain, Ian (1997). ''Once An Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes'', Oxford University Press;

Notes

External links

*
Robert Hughes at Random House Australia

* ttp://ericellis.com/archive/hughesbulletin.htm Eric Ellis, The Bulletin, July 2002, "Shock of the Broome"
1987 audio interview of Robert Hughes by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio

* ttp://www.thenation.com/article/unsentimental-education The Nation – Christopher Hitchens column on ''Things I Didn't Know: A Memoir''. (25 September 2006)
''Enough Rope'', ABC TV Interview – Andrew Denton and Robert Hughes. (13 November 2006)
* with Hughes on

CBC Radio CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...

's '' Writers and Company'' (January 2008)] *
Robert Hughes interviewed on Charlie Rose

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Robert 1938 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Australian historians 20th-century Australian male writers Australian art critics Australian art historians Australian expatriates in England Australian expatriates in Italy Australian expatriates in the United States Australian historians Australian media personalities Australian memoirists Australian people of Irish descent Australian republicans Frank Jewett Mather Award winners Historians of Australia Officers of the Order of Australia People educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview People from Briarcliff Manor, New York Time (magazine) people University of Sydney alumni Writers from Sydney