| Robert Hughes AO (b. 1938) is the senior art critic for Time magazine.
Born in Sydney, Hughes was educated at Riverview and Sydney University,
although he did not complete a degree. Like many of the figures who floated
around the Sydney ‘Push’ in the late 1950s, he began his career
contributing poems, cartoons, criticism and articles to Honi Soit, the Observer,
and Nation. He began working for Time in 1970, the year his The Art of Australia
was published, and has lived in the US ever since. His books include The
Shock of the New (also a TV series) (1980), The Fatal Shore (1987), Nothing
if Not Critical (1990), American Visions (also a TV series) (1997) and the
autobiographical A Jerk on One End (1999) whose title refers to his love
of fishing. He is currently working on a book about the Spanish artist Francisco
de Goya.
Bill Leak started work on this portrait in 1999, as Hughes began filming
his television series on Australia Beyond the Fatal Shore. Hughes had
filmed only two scenes when he suffered a near-fatal car accident on the
coast of WA. The series was cobbled together during his agonising convalescence,
and Hughes had little control over the final cut, but its negative reception
led to his remark that for all he cared, they could ‘tow Australia
out to sea and sink it’. The accident led to a protracted legal
process; three years later, there was still talk of extraditing Hughes
from the USA to face charges. His second marriage broke down, and his
only son died. The effect of these experiences on his friend led Leak
to abandon his earlier, more detailed portrait for this one, inspired
by the terrifying late work of Goya, conveying Hughes’s furious
pain, despair and determination in the years after 1999.
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