Says here "the critic Robert Hughes" has compared R. Crumb to Breughel. Same Robert Hughes as the Fatal Shore guy? If so, he sure gets around.
Posted by Martha Bridegam at March 6, 2005 10:56 PMHughes is an art historian and critic by background; as far as I'm aware The Fatal Shore is his only extended work of history proper.
Posted by: Alan Allport at March 7, 2005 12:58 AMDoes anyone have a sample of his art writing?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 7, 2005 11:24 AMI think Hughes is a rocker (which means you may not like him). His art writing is muscular, fad-bashing, pithy aside-strewn ('Brideshead Revisited, the only vulgar novel Waugh ever wrote'), two-fisted and very knowledgeable. He compares the stale, money drenched art scene in Rome that Carravaggio emerged into with the New York of the latter Warhol and the ludicrous Basquiat. He said of the diabolical Damien Hirst's pickled shark: 'I might have been impressed if he'd caught the f**king thing himself.' Last year he gave a lecture at the Royal Aca. trashing Brit Art, denouncing 'fast art'. The lecture in online at the Guardian site.
Posted by: Airbrushed By The Commissars at March 8, 2005 02:10 AMDo folks who have read all or part of *Fatal Shore* want to comment frexample on whether art critics go after history writing differently than historians do?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 8, 2005 08:24 PM