Robert Hughes RIP

[uiwangmike]

I really didn't know much about him and had neither seen his documentaries nor read such as "The Fatal Shore"

His 1980 TV series The Shock of the New (commended by Norman) is on Youtube.

[AndyM]

Garth - re. Kenneth Tynan - he was before my time too, but so were Duke Ellington and Picasso..... His criticism is in various collections that might be picked up cheap second hand, 'Curtains' and 'The Sound of One Hand Clapping' are two that spring to mind.

A fantastic stylist, always razor-sharp and not a 'snob'. His category of "high-definition performance" (his term for those who can crystallise what matters about their art into piercing moments of indelible brilliance) covered theatre, comedy, music, sport & more. He admired Eric Morecambe and Muhamad Ali as much as Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich. Some of his tastes were dubious - he worshipped Orson Welles and was a great aficionado of bullfighting - but oh he could write.

[garth cartwright]

Andy, ta, I'll check him out. I didn't mean "before my time" as dismissive - just that most of the critics I rate I grew up reading as they were published (Hughes in Time, Kael in New Yorker, Bangs in Creem etc). While Tynan I only know through reading about the UK in the 60s - wasn't he behind Oh Calcutta? Which I've never seen but, again, have read about in books on the 60s.

[AndyM]

He was, and the controversies it caused pretty much overshadowed his later years, sadly.