Clip description
Robert Hughes is dismissive of anyone who says you can see the great art works online or in books. He says that it is important to travel to the world’s art galleries to see the real thing. He insists that the first duty of a good art critic is to develop a visual memory by seeing and absorbing a lot of art. He insists that he needed to leave Australia to truly appreciate great art.
Curator’s notes
Robert Hughes left Australia to develop his visual language. He says he has always read prodigiously and has a great facility with language. He’d begun a law degree but soon realised that his older brother Tom (now Tom Hughes QC(Queen’s Counsel)) would always be the legal star in the family. Hughes is from a grand Catholic family and grew up in Sydney’s moneyed eastern suburbs. He recalls that the family would sit around the dinner table in the pre-television era, talking about the issues of the day. His years with the Jesuits at Riverview taught him Latin and rhetoric, and he was trained to learn by heart large slabs of John Donne, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Thus Robert Hughes developed the extraordinary memory that has always served him so well in his art criticism.