Robert Hughes

Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists of the 1920's is that they they thought such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was a certain naivete that made them think so. But it is certainly our loss that we cannot."

Art Book Loss

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?"

Art Struggle Doe

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable."

Art War Forever

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"It was the basilica of gossip, the Vatican of inside dope."

Dope Gossip

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker."

Eye Views Perspective

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"Now that rates are moving up, we're seeing more aggressive offerings from banks."

Moving Offering Aggressive

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world."

Evil World Made

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis."

Mean Analysis Painting

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"No art goes unmediated by other art."

Art Standards

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"One thing is sure: the Sagrada Familia is the first Catholic temple whose bacon was ever saved by Shinto tourism. Not even Gaudi, who believed in miracles, could have forseen that."

Miracle Catholic Tourism

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"Everything that would be said against the Eixample's heirs, from Le Corbusier's 'ville radieuse' to Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia, was already said, with far less justice, about the Eixample itself. And all its critics concurred that the basic mistake was to have left the planning of a city in the hands of a socialist."

Mistake Hands Cities

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent."

Political Intellectual World

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"In America, nostalgia for things is apt to set in before they go."

America Nostalgia

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"The desire to be primitive was very much a function of fin-de-siècle imperialism; it appealed to strong egos and domineering minds."

Strong Ego Mind

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"On Platini's presidential watch... he has to balance all the leagues, all the dreams and needs of hundreds of clubs across his continent."

Soccer Football Dream

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"It was a secular cathedral, dedicated to the rites of travel."

Travel Cathedrals Dedicated

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"But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow."

Mean Doe Existence

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"The World's Fair audience tended to think of the machine as unqualifiedly good, strong, stupid and obedient. They thought of it as a giant slave, an untiring steel Negro, controlled by Reason in a world of infinite resources."

Strong Stupid Thinking

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Robert Hughes Art Critic, Author

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"America is a construction of mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory."

America Race Class

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"The point of a library's existence is not persuasion or evangelism, but knowledge. It is irrelevant to the good library whether, as an institution, it shares or promotes your core values or mine, or the Attorney General's or Saddam Hussein's. The library is always an instrument of choice, and the choice is always yours, not your elected or designated leaders."

Choices Leader Library

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