A generous selection of forthright essays on art and artists. Hughes tackles the lives and works of over 80 artists, from the old masters to our contemporaries, exploring their achievement (or lack of it) and how they altered the history of art for better or worse.
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A timeline of artistic endeavour from the formal resources of the past to the boom-and-bust media hype of a postmodern age.
In these celebrated essays Robert Hughes explores the lives and works of more than 80 artists, from Hans Holbein to Andy Warhol and beyond, assessing their achievements (or lack of them) and how they altered the history of art for better or for worse. Castigating the excesses of the 1980s New York art scene, with its manufactured celebrity and inflated prices, he argues for the real values of art and outlines the way ahead for a new generation of artists.
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First Sentence
That Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) was one of the supreme portrait painters has never been in doubt. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
That Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) was one of the supreme portrait painters has never been in doubt. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By PH
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The big problem with 'Nothing If Not Critical' is that it highlights the paucity of intelligent art criticism currently available. This book is an absolute delight and one that should be carried around to lift the spirits and to return one's personal focus of attention onto the artworks and not the monetary value of artworks.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It is not that there are no critics, today, who have the eye and discernment such as Robert Hughes had in his lifetime, but that so little is heard from them. In a way, Hughes had little time for the business of art - certainly not for the way it was going - and consistently warned of the consequences of giving in to the art of celebrity that is ignorant of core skills or the inherent difficulty in making good art. He had a good feel for depth in works of art and scorn for anything shallow and no-one was wholly immune; late Picasso's a case in point. This volume represents a hearty read, entertaining at times and always informative; even convincing, where his objectivity and sympathy can make you look again at works you might otherwise be prejudiced against - in my case the works of Morandi whose art I will definitely look at afresh. Many of the emerging artists of the eighties do not come out well and here is where Hughes departs, in large part, from the critical mainstream, but the rest is History and Hughes is no longer around to counterbalance the weight of uncritical support for "High art Light" and the power of the auction rooms
By Gary Morgan
Format:Paperback
Hughes manages to show how popular art criticism can and should be done. Eschewing jargon, he ranges from Old Masters to contemporaries, most of the latter he has no time for and skewers whenever he can - they are, after all, a juicy target. He writes beautifully; just look at the description of Goya's '2nd of May' cavalryman's sabre or the look of Van Gogh's Provence. This is someone with a novelist's gifts and in service of one who is serious but never pompous. I always find this book a delight, and whether I happen upon a piece on, say, Reynolds ('Sir Sploshua' as a contemporary called him) or the British portraitists, Hughes finds much undervalued, he always has fascinating, often provocative things to say. He is quite prepared to call trash, trash; he is equally unashamed to laud the unfashionable, like Singer-Sargeant or the PreRaphaelites. Every page has something to relish; there are few in any field of whom one may say that. This man values skill and has it in abundance in his criticism. And bravo for calling out the art market rather presciently.
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