Robert Hughes (critic)
Encyclopedia
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO (born 28 July 1938) is an Australian-born art critic
, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.
in World War I, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. Geoffrey Hughes died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12. Robert Hughes's mother was Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal. His older brother, Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes, is an Australian lawyer and former Attorney-General of Australia
.
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
.http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_id=1532 http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Current/Rose%20review.htm 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.
In 1961, an article by a law student, Geoffrey Lehmann
, in the Sydney University weekly newspaper Honi Soit noted similarities between specific Hughes poems (including two that had won the Henry Lawson Prize in 1957) and work by Terence Tiller
, George Seferis
, Alun Lewis
and Dylan Thomas
. Similarly, a published Hughes drawing was described as resembling one which had appeared in a 1955 international art magazine. The criticism was given wider prominence by the award-winning poet and journalist Elizabeth Riddell
in a Daily Mirror
article.
, 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
.
Hughes and Harold Hayes
were recruited in 1978 to anchor the new ABC News
(US) newsmagazine
20/20. His only broadcast, on 6 June 1978, proved so disastrous that, less than a week later, ABC News president Roone Arledge
dumped Hughes and Hayes, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs
.
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.
During the 1990s, Hughes was a prominent supporter of the Australian Republican Movement
.
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. During production, Hughes was involved in the near-fatal road accident
detailed in the next section.
Hughes is notorious for his criticisms of artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel
, whom he has described as being "to painting what [Sylvester] Stallone is to acting - a lurching display of oily pectorals - except that Schnabel makes bigger public claims for himself." When asked about Hughes' criticisms on an episode of 60 Minutes
, Schnabel angrily replied, "He's a bum".
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. http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=1519612006
Hughes and Emerson had one child, Danton (30 September 1967 – 2002), named after the French revolutionary, Georges Danton
. Danton became a sculptor and lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. In 2002, at age 34, Danton Hughes took his own life
by gassing himself with his car in the garage. 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."
On a CBC radio program, Writers and Company, broadcast in 2007, Hughes spoke about Danne's serial promiscuity, drug use and how miserable their life together had become. Hughes said that he and Danne had stayed together despite his unhappiness because they were Catholics. Further, he said he should have taken their son Danton and left Danne but blamed lack of money and the social mores of the time for not doing so.
From 1981 until 1996, he was married to Victoria Hughes, née Whistler, a California housewife, whom he met when she approached him on his "Fatal Shore" book tour in California. It was not until the marriage was dissolved in 1998 that Hughes was informed that Victoria was married at the time of their first meeting and quickly divorced without informing Hughes of her marital status. He writes in his autobiography of the financial toll the divorce was to have on him for years thereafter.
In 2001, Robert married American artist and former art director
, Doris Downes
, with whom he had been together for 10 years. She is 21 years his junior. He has two stepchildren from Downes's previous marriage, Freeborn Jewett IV and Fielder Jewett. They divide their time between a loft in New York City and a home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
His niece Lucy Turnbull
(his brother Tom's daughter), a former Lord Mayor
of Sydney, is married to Australian businessman Malcolm Turnbull
, who in September 2008 became Leader of the Opposition in the Federal Parliament. Robert stayed with them for a period of time during his recovery from injuries in the 1999 car accident and later rented an apartment in the Sydney environs so that he could complete 'Beyond the Fatal Shore', a film he had started and stopped abruptly due to his accident. The accident scene and details proved to be a powerful backdrop for the award winning series produced by Oxford Films, London.
Award for art criticism in 1982 and 1985, given by the College Art Association
of America.
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.
Early life
Hughes was born in Sydney in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were prominent lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was an aviatorAviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
in World War I, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. Geoffrey Hughes died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12. Robert Hughes's mother was Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal. His older brother, Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes, is an Australian lawyer and former Attorney-General of Australia
Attorney-General of Australia
The Attorney-General of Australia is the first law officer of the Crown, chief law officer of the Commonwealth of Australia and a minister of the Crown. The Attorney-General is usually a member of the Federal Cabinet, but there is no constitutional requirement that this be the case since the...
.
He was educated at St Ignatius' College, Riverview before going on to study arts and then architecture at the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. At university, Hughes associated with the Sydney "Push"
Sydney Push
The Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual sub-culture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early '70s. Well known associates of the Push include Jim Baker, John Flaus, Harry Hooton, Margaret Fink, Sasha Soldatow, Lex Banning, Eva Cox, Richard Appleton, Paddy McGuinness, David...
– a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Among the group were Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
and Clive James
Clive James
Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...
. 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
Donald Horne
Professor Donald Horne was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals....
.http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_id=1532 http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Current/Rose%20review.htm 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
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...
, and wrote art criticism for The Nation and The Sunday Mirror.
In 1961, an article by a law student, Geoffrey Lehmann
Geoffrey lehmann
Geoffrey Lehmann is an Australian poet, children's writer, and tax lawyer. Lehmann grew up in McMahon's Point, Sydney, and attended high school at the Shore School in North Sydney. He graduated in Arts and Law from the University of Sydney in 1960 and 1963 respectively...
, in the Sydney University weekly newspaper Honi Soit noted similarities between specific Hughes poems (including two that had won the Henry Lawson Prize in 1957) and work by Terence Tiller
Terence Tiller
Terence Rogers Tiller was an English poet and radio producer.-Early life:He was born in Truro, Cornwall. His early career was in medieval history at the University of Cambridge. During the World War II he taught in Cairo.-BBC:In 1946 he joined the BBC; and was a known Fitzrovian...
, George Seferis
Giorgos Seferis
Giorgos or George Seferis was the pen name of Geōrgios Seferiádēs . He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate...
, Alun Lewis
Alun Lewis
Alun Lewis , was a poet of the Anglo-Welsh school, and is regarded by many as Britain's finest Second World War poet.- Education :...
and Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
. Similarly, a published Hughes drawing was described as resembling one which had appeared in a 1955 international art magazine. The criticism was given wider prominence by the award-winning poet and journalist Elizabeth Riddell
Elizabeth Riddell
Elizabeth Riddell was an Australian poet and journalist.Born in Napier, New Zealand, Elizabeth Richmond Riddell came to Australia in 1928 where she worked at Smith's Weekly and won a Walkley Award....
in a Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror (Australia)
The Daily Mirror was an afternoon paper established by Ezra Norton in Sydney, Australia in 1941, gaining a licence from the Minister for Trade and Customs, Eric Harrison, despite wartime paper rationing. In October 1958, Norton and his partners sold his newspapers to the Fairfax group, which...
article.
Career
Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London, England (1965) where he wrote for The SpectatorThe Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, 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
Protected (Film)
Protected is a 1975 documentary film, narrated by Don Brady and Sydney born producer Robert Hughes. The film was directed by Alessandro Cavadini. It was an exposé of the ill-treatment of Aboriginal workers by white men...
, a documentary showing what life was like for Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
on Palm Island
Palm Island, Queensland
Palm Island is an Aboriginal community located on Great Palm Island, also called by the Aboriginal name "Bwgcolman", an island on the Great Barrier Reef in North Queensland, Australia The settlement is also known by a variety of other names including "the Mission", Palm Island Settlement or Palm...
.
Hughes and Harold Hayes
Harold Hayes
Harold Thomas Pace Hayes was a main architect of the New Journalism movement.-Biography:He was born on April 18, 1926 in North Carolina.He was an editor of Esquire magazine from 1963 to 1973...
were recruited in 1978 to anchor the new ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
(US) newsmagazine
Newsmagazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published piece of paper, magazine or a radio or television program, usually weekly, featuring articles or segments on current events...
20/20. His only broadcast, on 6 June 1978, proved so disastrous that, less than a week later, ABC News president Roone Arledge
Roone Arledge
Roone Pickney Arledge, Jr. was an American sports broadcasting pioneer who was chairman of ABC News from 1977 until several years before his death, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.-Early...
dumped Hughes and Hayes, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs
Hugh Downs
Hugh Malcolm Downs is a long time American broadcaster, television host, news anchor, TV producer, author, game show host, and music composer; and is perhaps best known for his role as co-host the NBC News program Today from 1962 to 1971, host of the Concentration game show from 1958 to 1969, and...
.
In 1980, the BBC broadcast The Shock of the New
The Shock of the New
The Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary series by Robert Hughes that was broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom and by PBS in the United...
, Hughes's television series on the development of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
since the Impressionists
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
. 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
The Fatal Shore
The Fatal Shore. The epic of Australia's founding, by Robert Hughes, published 1987 by Harvill Press, is a historical account of the United Kingdom's settlement of Australia as a penal colony with convicts. The book details the period 1770 onwards through white settlement to the 1840s, when...
, Hughes's study of the British penal colonies
Penal colony
A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory...
and early European settlement of Australia, became an international best-seller.
During the 1990s, Hughes was a prominent supporter of the Australian Republican Movement
Australian Republican Movement
The Australian Republican Movement is a non-partisan lobby group advocating constitutional change in Australia to a republican form of government, from a constitutional monarchy.-Foundation:...
.
Hughes provided commentary on the work of artist Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
in parts of the 1994 film Crumb
Crumb (film)
Crumb is a 1994 documentary film about the noted underground comic artist Robert Crumb and his family. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O'Donnell and David Lynch, it won widespread acclaim, including both the Grand Jury Prize and best cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival...
, 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
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
was subjected to criticism. 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 the near-fatal road accident
Car accident
A traffic collision, also known as a traffic accident, motor vehicle collision, motor vehicle accident, car accident, automobile accident, Road Traffic Collision or car crash, occurs when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, animal, road debris, or other stationary obstruction,...
detailed in the next section.
Hughes is notorious for his criticisms of artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, whom he has described as being "to painting what [Sylvester] Stallone is to acting - a lurching display of oily pectorals - except that Schnabel makes bigger public claims for himself." When asked about Hughes' criticisms on an episode of 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
, Schnabel angrily replied, "He's a bum".
Hughes's 2002 documentary on the painter Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, Goya: Crazy Like a Genius, was broadcast on the first night of the BBC's domestic digital service
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
.
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. http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=1519612006
Personal life
Hughes married his first wife, Danne Patricia Emerson, in 1967 and was divorced in 1981. She died of a brain tumour in 2003 at the age of sixty.Hughes and Emerson had one child, Danton (30 September 1967 – 2002), named after the French revolutionary, Georges Danton
Georges Danton
Georges Jacques Danton was leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him as "the chief force in theoverthrow of the monarchy and the...
. Danton became a sculptor and lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. In 2002, at age 34, Danton Hughes took his own life
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by gassing himself with his car in the garage. 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."
On a CBC radio program, Writers and Company, broadcast in 2007, Hughes spoke about Danne's serial promiscuity, drug use and how miserable their life together had become. Hughes said that he and Danne had stayed together despite his unhappiness because they were Catholics. Further, he said he should have taken their son Danton and left Danne but blamed lack of money and the social mores of the time for not doing so.
From 1981 until 1996, he was married to Victoria Hughes, née Whistler, a California housewife, whom he met when she approached him on his "Fatal Shore" book tour in California. It was not until the marriage was dissolved in 1998 that Hughes was informed that Victoria was married at the time of their first meeting and quickly divorced without informing Hughes of her marital status. He writes in his autobiography of the financial toll the divorce was to have on him for years thereafter.
In 2001, Robert married American artist and former art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
, Doris Downes
Doris Downes
Doris Downes is an American botanical artist and painter of natural history. She worked in design, and was Creative Director at Sotheby's, before becoming a full-time artist in 2001...
, with whom he had been together for 10 years. She is 21 years his junior. He has two stepchildren from Downes's previous marriage, Freeborn Jewett IV and Fielder Jewett. They divide their time between a loft in New York City and a home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
His niece Lucy Turnbull
Lucy Turnbull
Lucinda Mary "Lucy" Turnbull, née Hughes AO , a former Australian politician and former Lord Mayor of Sydney, is a prominent Australian business leader and company director. Turnbull was the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney, between 2003 and 2004 and was Deputy Lord Mayor, between 1999 and 2003...
(his brother Tom's daughter), a former Lord Mayor
Lord Mayor
The Lord Mayor is the title of the Mayor of a major city, with special recognition.-Commonwealth of Nations:* In Australia it is a political position. Australian cities with Lord Mayors: Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Newcastle, Parramatta, Perth, Sydney, and Wollongong...
of Sydney, is married to Australian businessman Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2004, and was Leader of the Opposition and parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party from 16 September 2008 to 1 December 2009.Turnbull has represented the Division...
, who in September 2008 became Leader of the Opposition in the Federal Parliament. Robert stayed with them for a period of time during his recovery from injuries in the 1999 car accident and later rented an apartment in the Sydney environs so that he could complete 'Beyond the Fatal Shore', a film he had started and stopped abruptly due to his accident. The accident scene and details proved to be a powerful backdrop for the award winning series produced by Oxford Films, London.
Honours
Hughes received the Frank Jewett MatherFrank Jewett Mather
Frank Jewett Mather was an American art critic and professor.He was born at Deep River, Conn., and graduated from Williams College in 1889 and from Johns Hopkins in 1892: he studied also at Berlin and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris...
Award for art criticism in 1982 and 1985, given by the College Art Association
College Art Association
The College Art Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for practitioners and scholars of art, art history, and art criticism...
of America.
- 1987 – named New York Public LibraryNew York Public LibraryThe New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
Literary Lion - 1988 – named recipient of the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.
- 1988 – W.H. Smith Literary Award for The Fatal ShoreThe Fatal ShoreThe Fatal Shore. The epic of Australia's founding, by Robert Hughes, published 1987 by Harvill Press, is a historical account of the United Kingdom's settlement of Australia as a penal colony with convicts. The book details the period 1770 onwards through white settlement to the 1840s, when...
- 1991 – Officer of the Order of AustraliaOrder of AustraliaThe Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
- 1995 – granted an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of MelbourneUniversity of MelbourneThe University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
- 1996 – elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
- 1997 – elected one of 40 "Living National Treasures" after a general vote conducted by the Australian media on behalf of the National Trust of AustraliaNational Trust of AustraliaThe Australian Council of National Trusts is the peak body for community-based, non-government organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's indigenous, natural and historic heritage....
- 2000 – London Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times (UK)The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
Writer of the Year (previous recipients of the award including Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
, Nobel laureate Seamus HeaneySeamus HeaneySeamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
, and Salman Rushdie) - 2007 – New South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsNew South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsThe New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Things I Didn't Know: a Memoir - 2009 – The Mona Lisa Curse – Winner of the 2009 Grierson Award for Best Documentary on the Arts, Oxford Film and Television for Channel 4, UK
- 2009 – International Emmy Award – Arts Programming, "The Mona Lisa Curse", Oxford Film and Television for Channel 4, UK
Publications (alphabetical order)
- American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (The Harvill Press, 1998. ISBN 1-86046-533-1)
- The Art of Australia (1966. ISBN 0-14-020935-2)
- Barcelona (Vintage, 1992. ISBN 0-394-58027-3)
- Barcelona: the Great Enchantress (2001. ISBN 0-7922-6794-X. Condensed version of Barcelona.)
- Culture of Complaint (Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507676-1)
- Donald Friend (Edwards and Shaw, Sydney, 1965)
- The Fatal ShoreThe Fatal ShoreThe Fatal Shore. The epic of Australia's founding, by Robert Hughes, published 1987 by Harvill Press, is a historical account of the United Kingdom's settlement of Australia as a penal colony with convicts. The book details the period 1770 onwards through white settlement to the 1840s, when...
(Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1987. ISBN 0-394-50668-5) - Frank Auerbach (Thames and Hudson, 1990)
- Goya (Vintage, 2004. ISBN 0-09-945368-1)
- Heaven and Hell in Western Art (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1968)
- A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman (1998. ISBN 0-345-42283-X)
- Lucian Freud Paintings (Thames & Hudson, 1989. ISBN 0-500-27535-1)
- Nothing if Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists (Including 'SoHoiad') (The Harvill Press, 1991. ISBN 1-86046-859-4)
- Rome (W&N, 2011. ISBN 0-2978-4464-4)
- The Shock of the NewThe Shock of the NewThe Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary series by Robert Hughes that was broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom and by PBS in the United...
: Art and the Century of Change (updated and enlarged edition, Thames & Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0-500-27582-3) - Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir (Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 2006. ISBN 1-4000-4444-8)
Biography
- Anderson, Patricia, Robert Hughes: The Australian Years, Pandora Press, 2009. ISBN 9780957914223
External links
- Robert Hughes at Random House Australia
- Valerie Lawson, Sydney Morning Herald, "After legal jousting and vitriol, Hughes fined in absentia for car crash" (2003)
- Eric Ellis, The Bulletin, July 2002, "Shock of the Broome"
- 1987 audio interview of Robert Hughes by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio
- The New York Times Magazine – Food; Tuna Surprise (A fisherman's journey to Costa Rica)
- The Times Online, “The curse of free love”, excerpt from Things I Didn’t Know: A Memoir. (20 August 2006)
- ABC Radio Interview- Andrew Denton and Robert Hughes
- International Herald Tribune- Joyce Wadler of the New York Times- at Home with Robert Hughes and Doris Downes