Politics & Power Quote by Robert Hughes

Hughes lands this line like a perfectly aimed dart: it’s not a compliment, it’s a diagnosis. By pairing “landscape” with “sex and psychoanalysis,” he’s arguing that American art forms each found a signature obsession - a subject that promises depth, sells sincerity, and quietly limits the imagination. Landscape, in this reading, isn’t just scenery; it’s America’s alibi. A nation uneasy about class, conquest, and identity can paint the land as sublime and “empty,” turning possession into transcendence. The terrain becomes a moral detergent: wash away history, keep the grandeur.

The comparison to the American novel is needle-sharp because sex and therapy aren’t merely themes; they’re narrative engines that let writers talk about power and shame under the cover of “self-discovery.” Hughes implies landscape functions the same way for painters: a legitimizing framework that converts ideology into atmosphere. You’re not looking at Manifest Destiny; you’re looking at light. You’re not seeing extraction; you’re seeing haze.

Context matters: Hughes came up as a fierce, skeptical critic of cultural self-mythologizing, especially in American art’s heroic storytelling. He’s winking at the canon from Hudson River School sublimity to the modern West as brand image, where “nature” becomes the safe stage for big feelings and big formats. The subtext is that America keeps returning to landscape because it’s both foundational and evasive - a way to be profound without being pinned down.