Robert Hughes (critic) - Career

Career

Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London (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 obtained the position of art critic for TIME magazine and he moved to New York, where he quickly established himself as an influential art critic. In 1975, along with Don Brady, he provided the narration for the film Protected, a documentary showing what life was like for Indigenous Australians on Palm Island.

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 Hughes and Hayes, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs. The BBC broadcast The Shock of the New (1980), made in association with the German producer Reiner Moritz, on the development of modern art since the Impressionists. John O'Connor in The New York Times of the series series that: "Agree or disagree, you will not be bored. Mr. Hughes has a disarming way of being provocative". It was accompanied by a book with the same title.

Hughes' 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, he was a prominent supporter of the Australian Republican Movement. Hughes provided criticism on the work of artist Robert Crumb in parts of the 1994 film Crumb, calling Crumb "the American Bruegel". His television series American Visions (1997) reviewed the history of American art since the Revolution. 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 the near-fatal road accident (see below). 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, the program aired first in 2004. He published the first volume of his memoirs, Things I Didn’t Know, in 2006.