The Great August Harvest of my friends and heroes continues as the opening night of Shakespeare In Italy on Thursday nears, a play that Hardy, Vidal and Hughes would have liked. My first experience of theatre in Sydney was Hughes’s blank verse Orwellian play Dead Men Walking, starring John Bell, Dick May and John Croyston, in the Wallace Theatre, its text lost now, and I remember being impressed by its craft and annoyed by its pretension in almost equal measure and being startled by Bell, a pale thin pimply boy I knew from English tutorials, being so magnificent in voice and appearance up on the stage.
I wrote something about Hughes I’m looking for now and will put up when I find it. He was Lucy Turnbull’s uncle and Bryan Brown’s cousin, and they were pen friends in the sixties, and Noeline Brown’s lover (wait for me, he said, I’ll send for you, and he never did) and these close connections of blood and romance in Australia startle even now. My episode with Charmian Clift. Charm’s with Peter Finch. Peter Porter’s eith Sally Lehman. The succession of famous girls with Frank Moorhouse. And so on.
I see now the piece I was after was cut out (by me, for length) of And So It Went and I’ll retrieve it with Annie’s help after next weekend when the play is settled in.
Hughes was almost the best of us as a writer. But he was a fine painter too — and a painting-forger I hear tell — a good playwright, and he could have been a great cartoonist, and was for a while.. But largely because of an article by Geoffrey Lehmann that I and Laurie Oakes published in honi soit — called, I think, Robert Hughes: The Phenomenon Of Subconscious Recall — alleging, and proving, some instances of plagiarism in his poetry he fled the country without taking a degree and by accident became, after European travels and humiliations in London (his wife Danne persisted in gang-banging the Rolling Stones), the best-known art critic of the recent century and a great occasional historian and television star.
But he could have been much more. As his friend Clive James, who was better at career, so tirelessly proved.
And it’s a pity.
Name:
Bob, I truly am sorry to hear this. I know your fellow Push alumni Germaine Greer, Eva Cox, Gerard Henderson et al will miss him.
Was never in the Push. Hate Cox and
Henderson. Go fuck yourself.
Whats your beef with Eva Cox Bob? Does she get more pussy than you?
Banned for life.
Good obit here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/07/robert-hughes
Thanks F.I.Kendall, after struggling with the art criticism of the likes of John Russell, it was such a joy to find Hughes, his books on Goya, The Shock of the New and Nothing if not Critical, were gems.
Such sad news.
I am at a loss for words.
It would be nice if they brought him home
Yes, that would be a very nice thing.
Vale Robert Hughes.
Vale Robert Hughes.
I watched his TV series on Australian and American art, and have most his books here.
Talking about acquaintances, my alpacas got to know Tom Hughes’s cows very well. During the draught they used to cross the river and happily graze in our paddocks, we felt honoured
correction: Art…sorry Robert.
De mortuis, etc…but, I regret he spoke harshly/cruelly/the truth re Danne: as did, equally regrettably, L Olivier re Vivien Leigh. I’m hoping that I will see some insights on Bob’s next Robert Hughes piece.
Vale Robert Hughes!
Oh!
And Reader1′s dog!!
I haven’t picked up any of his books in years, but I will tonight.
He was a fine writer.
My List:
The Fatal Shore
Culture of Complaint
Shock of the New
Nothing if Not Critical
Heaven and Hell in Western Art
American Visions
Salute Robert Hughes!
Thank you for “The Fatal Shore” and for introducing me to Sean Scully and Christopher Wilmarth.
Farewell Robert Hughes. He had several more years in which to delight us after his horrendous car accident of 1999.
His work on Goya was a special delight; I always found Goya had a special luminous quality to his work.