Robert Hughes RIP

[Stavros]

The Australian art critic Robert Hughes has died in New York at the age of 74. As well as his monumental history of Ausralia, The Fatal Shore (1987), he had a gift for making art accessible to the general public, covering art from ancient times through to the contemporary scene. A core belief of his was that making art is a physical as well as an emotional and intellectual experience, and that the best art meant sweat, working with paint, canvas, wood, marble, and so on. After recovering from a horrific car accident he wrote a superb book on Goya (2004), having by then established himself as a fair but uncompromising critic.

His views of conceptual art were brutal but fair: if the concept worked, then the art had a chance, but too often it didn't. He remarked of Damien Hirst's Shark thing that it would have been ok if he had killed the shark himself, and his dismissal of Jeff Koons is priceless:

"Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him."

Best of all was a tv show he did a few years ago, in which he at one point sat in an upper west side apartment adorned with Andy Warhols and basically told the guy who had spent millions of $$ buying it that it was shit. The man looked hurt and said something like 'I think that's a bit harsh', whereas of course Warhol's work is so completely dishonest, such facile, meaningless rubbish, it is actually worth less than shit.

His barbs, as well as his profound insight will be sorely missed.

[nevada64]

Stavros, thanks for introducing us to Mr. Hughes. Cheers.

[onmyknees]

The Australian art critic Robert Hughes has died in New York at the age of 74. As well as his monumental history of Ausralia, The Fatal Shore (1987), he had a gift for making art accessible to the general public, covering art from ancient times through to the contemporary scene. A core belief of his was that making art is a physical as well as an emotional and intellectual experience, and that the best art meant sweat, working with paint, canvas, wood, marble, and so on. After recovering from a horrific car accident he wrote a superb book on Goya (2004), having by then established himself as a fair but uncompromising critic.

His views of conceptual art were brutal but fair: if the concept worked, then the art had a chance, but too often it didn't. He remarked of Damien Hirst's Shark thing that it would have been ok if he had killed the shark himself, and his dismissal of Jeff Koons is priceless:

"Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him."

Best of all was a tv show he did a few years ago, in which he at one point sat in an upper west side apartment adorned with Andy Warhols and basically told the guy who had spent millions of $$ buying it that it was shit. The man looked hurt and said something like 'I think that's a bit harsh', whereas of course Warhol's work is so completely dishonest, such facile, meaningless rubbish, it is actually worth less than shit.

His barbs, as well as his profound insight will be sorely missed.

Art critics are about as important to me as squeegee window cleaners at the Lincoln Tunnel, ( with all due respect to the departed) but you say if the concept worked...then the art had a chance. Didn't Koons sell multiple pieces for multiple millions, as I recall ? Seems it worked for him. Not sure why you chose that particular critique or why Koon's choice of worship mattered to Hughes....or you....but then again, I think I know.

[Prospero]

And OMK proves, once again, how worthless his views are. What an irrelevent piece of ordure he is. Hughes was a magnificent critic - a man who wrote like a dream and his death is a loss to the thinking part of the human race of which OMK never stood a chance of joining. Woe betide intelligent and compassionate discourse and our culture when people like him hold sway. The barbarians are not just at the gates but inside them.

[danthepoetman]

Loved Robert Hughes too. Loved how he could say so much by pronouncing such few words. Loved how he could criticize without sounding too critical nor negative. Loved how he could take large perspectives on something without loosing sense of its reality. And loved how is intelligence could impress you without any trace of condescendence or superiority.
This man is going to be missed. And to be missed is always to remain at least a little…

[Prospero]

Loved Robert Hughes too. Loved how he could say so much by pronouncing such few words. Loved how he could criticize without sounding too critical nor negative. Loved how he could take large perspectives on something without loosing sense of its reality. And loved how is intelligence could impress you without any trace of condescendence or superiority.
This man is going to be missed. And to be missed is always to remain at least a little…


well put Dan.
Hughes spoke as an ordinary man - not an etiolated expert.

[Stavros]

Art critics are about as important to me as squeegee window cleaners at the Lincoln Tunnel, ( with all due respect to the departed) but you say if the concept worked...then the art had a chance. Didn't Koons sell multiple pieces for multiple millions, as I recall ? Seems it worked for him. Not sure why you chose that particular critique or why Koon's choice of worship mattered to Hughes....or you....but then again, I think I know.

But Hughes would probably argue that selling stuff for millions of $$ is precisely his point -for Jeff Koons substitute Warhol, Damien Hirst and for that matter Jack Vettriano. Hughes approached art from the perspective of art and architecture over more than a thousand years, and was dismissive of art which he felt had little to show in the way of craft, and even less in content. I chose the quote because it is so far removed from the standard language of art criticism, which I admit is a niche into which few minds tumble. On the other hand, Michelangelo has endured for five hundred years, and there are reasons for it, even if they have been lost in translation somewhere in the Lincoln Tunnel. And Any Warhol would probably consider the squeegee cleaners to be artists...