Robert Hughes Quotes

July 28, 1938 – August 6, 2012

Robert Studley Forrest Hughes (28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012) was a prominent Australian art critic, writer, documentary broadcaster and republican (anti-monarchist).

Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence— the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.

"Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"

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Its clones have hung on so many suburban walls over the decades that it has become the Mona Lisa of the vegetable world.

Robert Hughes
— On Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. In Time, 13 April 1987.

Tags: Art, clones, hung, suburban, walls, over, decades, become, Mona

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It is the nature of carnivores to get power and then, having disposed of their enemies, to deploy the emollient powers of Great Art to make themselves look like herbivores.

Robert Hughes
— "Komar and Melamid" (1982)

Tags: nature, carnivores, power, then, having, disposed, enemies, deploy, powers

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The hallmark of the minor artist is to be obsessed with style as an end in itself.

Robert Hughes
— "Alex Katz" (1986)

Tags: hallmark, minor, artist, obsessed, style, end

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The protein of our cultural imagination.

Robert Hughes
— Of the US Museum of Modern  Art. In Time, 14 May 1984.

Tags: protein, our, cultural, imagination

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There's no geist like the Zeitgeist.

Robert Hughes
— New York Review of Books, 27 Oct 1983

Tags: Zeitgeist

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In America, nostalgia for things is apt to set in before they go.

Robert Hughes
— "Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"

Tags: America, nostalgia, things, apt, set, before

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The desire to be primitive was very much a function of fin-de-siècle imperialism; it appealed to strong egos and domineering minds.

Robert Hughes
— "Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"

Tags: desire, primitive, function, findesicle, imperialism, appealed, strong, egos, domineering

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What strip-mining is to nature, the art market has become to culture.

Robert Hughes
— "Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"

Tags: What, nature, art, market, become, culture

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Perhaps the rhinos and she-crocodiles whose gyrations between Mortimer's and East Hampton gives us our vision of social eminence today are content to entrust their faces to Andy Warhol's mingily cosmetic Polaroidising, but one would bet they would rather go to Sargent.

Robert Hughes
— "John Singer Sargent" (1986)

Tags: East, gives, us, our, vision, social, eminence, today, content

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It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.

Robert Hughes
— "Vincent van Gogh, Part I" (1984)

Tags: van, Gogh's, madness, prevented, him, working, paintings, themselves, sane

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The sense of not having the whole story that comes from living close up to traumatic events.

Robert Hughes
— "R.B. Kitaj" (1981)

Tags: sense, having, whole, story, living, close, traumatic, events

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Like most artists who have made an invention of some kind, he tends to overplay the significance of his own and goes on about it as though it were a Rosetta Stone, with whose help all representation can be rescued from one-eyed falsehood.

Robert Hughes
— "David Hockney" (1988)

Tags: most, artists, who, invention, kind, tends, significance, own, Rosetta

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New Song rapidly accumulated a nucleus of talent, and its best-known group was Els Setze Jutges, The Sixteen Judges, whose odd-sounding name came from a phrase used as a password by Catalan patriot troops during the rising against and occupation army in 1640 during the Reapers' War: "Setze jutges d'un jutjat menjen fetge d'un penjat" ("Sixteen judges on a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged man"). No lisping Castilian, it was believed, could pronounce this barrage of fricatives.

Robert Hughes
— Page 11 (Barcelona (1992))

Tags: New, Song, rapidly, accumulated, nucleus, talent, bestknown, group, Setze

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Everything that would be said against the Eixample's heirs, from Le Corbusier's 'ville radieuse' to Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia, was already said, with far less justice, about the Eixample itself. And all its critics concurred that the basic mistake was to have left the planning of a city in the hands of a socialist.

Robert Hughes
— Page 284 (Barcelona (1992))

Tags: Everything, against, heirs, Oscar, Brasilia, far, less, justice, critics

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The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

Robert Hughes
— "Modernism's Patriarch (Cezanne)", Time Magazine, June 10, 1996

Tags: greater, artist, doubt, perfect, confidence, granted, less, talented, consolation

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One thing is sure: the Sagrada Familia is the first Catholic temple whose bacon was ever saved by Shinto tourism. Not even Gaudi, who believed in miracles, could have forseen that.

Robert Hughes
— Page 526 (Barcelona (1992))

Tags: One, thing, Sagrada, first, Catholic, temple, bacon, saved, Shinto

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