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Bill Leak talks with Magda Keaney about
his portrait of Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes -
Nothing if not critical 2001
by Bill Leak (b. 1956)
oil on canvas
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2002
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So this was before the car accident?
Yes, years before. Anyway, we stayed in touch…when he was in
Australia to work on the series Beyond the Fatal Shore. He told me that
he wanted me involved in it, and we also discussed doing the portrait.
He said, 'Well, I'm going to be here for quite a while so we'll be able
to work on the portrait as well.' So it was all sort of set in concrete
that I was going to do the portrait while he was in Australia doing
that series, and he also asked me to participate in it too. And a couple
of days later he had his accident, up near Broome….
He was so smashed up he was in hospital for six months at least, I
think. When Bob was physically able to just get around, he went around
doing the voice-overs and doing pieces to camera for the series. I saw
quite a lot of him at that time, and we organised a few sittings and
got started on the painting. And there was even one sitting that was
filmed as part of that show.
And then I hadn't finished it and Bob had to go back to New York,
and there was all the terrible business about his court case and all
the rest of it. So off he went and I was stuck here with a three-quarters
finished portrait that I didn't like.
The bloke was almost killed, and literally every bone in the right-hand
side of his body was smashed - he had fragments of bones in his lungs
and stuck into his spleen - it was a miracle that he lived, actually,
and that his brain was still intact. His body was shattered, you know?
And so I thought, 'This painting just doesn't say anything about that.
I've got to approach it in a totally different way.'
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