Robert Hughes Quotes

America came up with the idea of therapeutic avant-gardism, and built museums in its name. These temples stood on two pillars. The first was aestheticism… The second was the familiar one of social benefit.

The self is now the sacred cow of American culture, self-esteem is sacrosanct, and sowe labour to turn arts education into a system in which no one can fail. In the same spirit, tennis could be shorn of its elitist overtones: you just get rid of the net.

Its clones have hung on so many suburban walls over the decades that it has become the Mona Lisa of the vegetable world.

[A Gustave Courbet] portrait of a trout…has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.

Landscape is to American painting what s*x and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

Close by the Hudson, in Manhattan’s town, The iron palaces of Art glare down On such as, wandering in the streets below, Perambulate in glamorous So Ho, A spot acclaimed by savant and by bard As forcing chamber of the Avant-Garde.