A beautifully illustrated hundred-year history of modern art, from cubism to pop and avant-guard. More than 250 color photos.
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From Publishers Weekly
The author of The Fatal Shore and Time magazine's art critic here presents a greatly expanded version of a PBS television series on modern art, and includes some 270 color illustrations. Although he frequently deals in generalities, "choice anecdotes, telling characterizations, witty observations flow from his pen," lauded PW . The "chapters bristle with apt insights."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Robert Hughes has been an art critic for Time magazine since 1970. His eight-part BBC/Time-Life television series, on which this book is based, has been broadcast throughout the United States on public television. He has received the Franklin Jewett Mather Award for Distinguished Criticism from the College Art Association of America twice, and he has authored the Art of Australia (1966); Heaven and Hell in Western Art (1969); and Nothing If Not Critical (1990), a collection of essays on art and artists.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Writers of fiction could go to school on Robert Hughes. In this book you run across description after description, phrase after phrase that prove the power of language while conveying the power of art, so many 'spot on' explications that one is left feeling nearly overwhelmed. Fittingly, language is at the center of one of his primary theses: That art invents the language that the world will then put into daily use. Shelley wrote that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world; Hughes might say that artists are their counterparts in the Supreme Court.
Hughes is a stern, hard-boiled man, whose readings are based on clearest common sense. Even while he's transported by the beauty of a Frankenthaler, he has one eye open to make sure he's not being conned. He brooks no insincerity or unnecessary pomposity. His happens to be the only sensibility with the power to bring art to the masses, which is why it's appropriate Hughes is on television reaching out to the masses again in 1997. Dogmatism throughout will probably rub some artists the wrong way, but for the novice like me, it clears aside rhetoric and creates access.
I came to modern art wondering why every museum displayed the same boring things; now I know why, and why it doesn't have to be so. This is the leaping-off point for which I've always been waiting.
Hughes is a stern, hard-boiled man, whose readings are based on clearest common sense. Even while he's transported by the beauty of a Frankenthaler, he has one eye open to make sure he's not being conned. He brooks no insincerity or unnecessary pomposity. His happens to be the only sensibility with the power to bring art to the masses, which is why it's appropriate Hughes is on television reaching out to the masses again in 1997. Dogmatism throughout will probably rub some artists the wrong way, but for the novice like me, it clears aside rhetoric and creates access.
I came to modern art wondering why every museum displayed the same boring things; now I know why, and why it doesn't have to be so. This is the leaping-off point for which I've always been waiting.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book was assigned as a supplement to our main textbook (although we refer to it more often than our more stodgily written "main" text) in my contemporary art history class. I highly recommend it for novices to contemporary art history or even those more learned. It is concise--not too wordy. It neither scares you away nor bores you with super-intellectual jargon and babble. Plus, Mr. Hughes gives brief historical and cultural background information when describing certain movements. This is critical in understanding where/how the art originates.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is very wordy, the author tends to use French and Italian phrases without translation. The book's cryptic explanations and definitions must be tediously read and re-read, since they do not appear to follow any pattern. Hughes is a pretentious attention seeker. This book is not for anyone outside art students.
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4.6 out of 5 stars
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Hughes: A Huge Mistake
Granted, Robert Hughes looks upons the legacies of figures like Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel "Basketcase", and the vacuous nothingness of most works that have produced... Read more
Published on Sep 21 2003 by Mr. Hasta Pasta
2.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult reading.
I have read some past reviews on this book, and i am shocked to find that college students have been using this book for learning. Read more
Published on Oct 2 2001
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