Robert Hughes Biography Quotes 10 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robert Hughes was born in Sydney in 1938 and educated at St Ignatius College, Riverview. He began studying architecture at the University of Sydney but left before completing a degree, drawn instead to writing, drawing, and the intellectual life of the city. His family background was prominent in Australian public life: his father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, had been a distinguished aviator and businessman, and his elder brother, Tom Hughes, became a leading barrister and later Attorney-General of Australia. Through that family branch he was uncle to Lucy Turnbull, who would later serve as Lord Mayor of Sydney and marry Malcolm Turnbull, a future Prime Minister. The mix of rigorous schooling, exposure to Catholic humanism, and lively debates among Sydney's writers and artists shaped his eye and his prose early on.

From Australia to London and New York
Hughes began publishing criticism and essays while still very young, quickly establishing himself as a forceful, unpretentious voice on art and culture. He moved to London in the mid-1960s, part of a wave of Australian expatriates seeking a larger stage. There he wrote for major newspapers and magazines and published early books on art and visual culture. In 1970 he was recruited to New York to serve as art critic for Time magazine, a post he held for decades. The role put him in direct contact with curators, dealers, collectors, and artists at the center of the international art world, and he became one of the most widely read critics in English.

Television and Public Reach
Hughes's breakthrough to a global audience came with The Shock of the New (1980), an eight-part television series (and companion book) that traced modern art from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Written and presented by Hughes, it combined lucid history with sharp on-camera judgment, introducing viewers to figures such as Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Warhol, and Pollock while explaining how cities, technology, and commerce shaped artistic change. He would later write and present American Visions (a broad survey of art in the United States) and produce other acclaimed series and films, using television not as a simplifier but as a medium for clear thinking.

Books and Ideas
Hughes published a string of influential books that reached well beyond specialist circles. The Fatal Shore examined the convict origins of European Australia with unsparing detail and narrative power. Barcelona was both urban history and cultural portrait. Goya was a major work of art history and biography, while Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History distilled a lifetime of looking at that city. Collections such as Nothing If Not Critical gathered his essays, and The Culture of Complaint assessed the climate of public debate in the United States. His memoir, Things I Didnt Know, reflected on family, ambition, and the making of a critic. Across these works he balanced learned context with a refusal to hide behind jargon.

Critical Temperament and Debates
Hughes favored clarity, moral seriousness, and historical depth. He admired painters who wrestled with form and experience, writing with particular regard for artists such as Goya, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach. He was skeptical of spectacle and market hype, and he did not hesitate to challenge contemporary stars including Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons or to dispute the influence of powerful collectors like Charles Saatchi. The Mona Lisa Curse, a late-career documentary, set his case against the fusion of celebrity and money in the art market. In the broader public sphere he was often placed in conversation with earlier broadcasters such as Kenneth Clark and with interpretive critics like John Berger; where Berger emphasized social readings and Clark a patrician sweep, Hughes prized factual rigor, historical connection, and vivid description.

Accident and Later Years
In the late 1990s Hughes survived a devastating car accident in Western Australia that led to a long recovery. The experience sharpened the autobiographical turn in his later work and did not dim his commitment to plain speaking. He continued to publish ambitious books, make television programs, and lecture internationally. His long tenure at Time, and his collaborations with broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic, kept his writing in front of broad audiences even as he battled the aftereffects of injury.

Personal Life
Hughes married more than once and built his home life across Australia, Britain, and the United States. In his later years he lived in New York and married the American artist Doris Downes, who became a close partner in his work and recovery. He had a son, and he sustained a wide circle of colleagues and friends in the arts. Away from the desk he loved fishing, an interest he treated with the same candor and humor that marked his criticism.

Death and Legacy
Robert Hughes died in 2012, in New York, after more than four decades as one of the most forceful art critics in the English language. Obituaries and tributes from artists, writers, curators, and fellow critics emphasized the reach of his television essays, the authority of his prose, and the independence of his judgments. He showed how to connect art to history and ordinary life without condescension, and he proved that criticism could be both entertaining and exacting. For many viewers and readers, names like Picasso, Duchamp, and Goya were first encountered through his voice; for many artists and institutions, his approval was gratifying and his disapproval bracing. His books remain in print, his films are still watched, and his insistence that looking hard and speaking plainly matter continues to guide critics and audiences alike.

Our collection contains 10 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Art - Perseverance - Travel.