Robert Hughes

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Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO (28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012) was an Australian-born art critic, essayist, and producer of television documentary films.

The Fatal Shore (1986) is his best-selling book The Late Colonial Colonies and the early history of Australia.

Robert Boynton of The New York Times called him "the most influential art critic in the country" in 1997. "Hughes is best known for his book and TV series on modern art, The Shock of the New, as well as his long-serving position as an art critic with TIME magazine."

Hughes, who is best known for his scathing critiques of art and musicians, was largely conservative in his tastes, but not belonging to a particular ideological group.

His writing was praised for its strength and elegance.

Early life

In 1938, Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia. Lawyers represented his father and paternal grandfather. Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, Hughes' father, was a pilot during the First World War and spent time as a solicitor and company director. When Robert was 12 years old, he died of lung cancer. Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal, was his mother. Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes, the father of former Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull, was the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's wife, was his elder brother. Constance and Geoffrey were his brothers.

Hughes grew up in Rose Bay, Sydney, before attending Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, before studying arts and architecture at the University of Sydney. He became a member of the Sydney "Push" group, a group of writers, scholars, and drinkers. Germaine Greer and Clive James were among the group's members.

Personal life

In 1967, Hughes met Danne Emerson, his first wife. They became involved in the 1960s counterculture, researching heroin use and sexual liberation. They divorced in 1981; she died of a brain tumor in 2003. Danton, Hughes' only child, was named after the French explorer Georges Danton. Danton Hughes, a sculptor, committed suicide in April 2001; his companion, fashion designer Jenny Kee, with whom he had been in a long-term relationship, found him. "I miss Danton and will always will," Robert Hughes later remarked, "I was wrongfully disappointed for years, and the agony of his loss has been somewhat reduced by the passage of time."

From 1981 to 1996, Hughes was married to Victoria Whistler, his second wife, from 1981 to 1996.

Hughes was involved in a near-fatal car accident south of Broome, Western Australia, in 1999. He was returning from a fishing trip and driving on the wrong side of the highway when he collided head on with another vehicle carrying three people. He was held in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition. Five weeks after the crash, Hughes was in a coma. Hughes' defence barrister argued that the occupants of the other vehicle were unlawful drug users at the time of the crash and were at fault. Hughes pleaded guilty to dangerous driving resulting in bodily harm in 2003 and was fined A$2,500. Lloyd Rayney was also accused of calling the crown prosecutor a "curry muncher," resulting in a defamation lawsuit and out-of-court settlement. In the first chapter of his 2006 book Things I Didn't Know, Hughes recounts the event and his recovery.

Hughes married Doris Downes, an American artist and art director, in 2001. "She saved my life and my emotional stability, as it is," he said.

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Career

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. Hughes was briefly involved in the original Sydney version of Oz magazine and wrote art criticism for Nation and The Sunday Mirror.

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 and others, and a drawing by Leonard Baskin.

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 Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Observer, among others, and contributed to the London version of Oz. In 1970 he was appointed art critic for TIME magazine and moved to New York, where he soon became an influential voice.

In 1966 Hughes published a history of Australian painting titled The Art of Australia, still considered an important work.

Hughes wrote and narrated the BBC eight-part series The Shock of the New (1980) on the development of modern art since the Impressionists. It was produced and in part directed by Lorna Pegram. It was accompanied by a book with the same title. John O'Connor of The New York Times 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 since the Revolution. Hughes's documentary on Francisco Goya, Goya: Crazy Like a Genius (2002), was broadcast on the first night of the new British domestic digital service, BBC Four. 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.

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 controversial that, less than a week later, ABC News president Roone Arledge terminated the contracts of both men, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs.

Hughes's book The Fatal Shore 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. 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.

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