The predator drone. Also books about Vladimir Putins russia, border security, the collection and use of personal data and much more. And for more information on this weekends 48hour television schedule, visit us online at booktv. Org. Art critic Robert Hughes appeared on booknotes in 1997 to talk about his book, american vises. In the book, mr. Hughes analyzed the associations between American Culture and the art its produced. This is about an hour. Cspan Robert Hughes, in the new yorker piece on ama, theres a quote from barbara rose that says in september 1970 bob was wearing love beads, a transparent linen shirt, a yellow wide whale corduroy suit and a black leather coat with nailheads on the back that spelled out this is not a coat, she says. What is that . Guest i was carrying the coat, i was not wearing it, when i came through u. S. Customs. That was when i first came to United States well, when i came to the United States to try out for time. It wasnt my first visit to the United States, but it was the one that caused all the trouble. Cspan why were you coming here for Time Magazine . Guest because theyd asked me to come and try out. They were looking for an art critic, and in some moment of aberration, they got me. It was purely accidental, as all things are. There was a book that id just brought out called heaven and hell in western art. And it sold about three and a half copies in the United States, and very luckily for me one of those copies found itself to the thenmanaging editor of time who said, well, lets try this fellow. And through a rather protracted business, they ran me to work in london, and my marriage was cracking up and all things favored a retreat from england, so i thought id go and see what it was like in the states. Of course, i thought i was going to stay for two years. So anyway, barbara met me at the airport, and there i was with. What she didnt mention was id come from italy, and i had all these bags with an herbal mixture which id gotten in florence. And i was going to give them to friends as presents, and the guy who was going through my bags and saw these plastic bags full of this herbal mixture sitting on top, and his eyes lit up, and he said whats that stuff . I said its potpourri. He said, what . I said, potpourri. Po [laughter] be so i nearly didnt make it into the United States. Cspan 27 years later, this has been in bookstores for a couple of months. What is it . Guest this . Its a book. Its called american visions which my editor subtitled the epic history of art in america. Its a book vastly expanded from a Television Series i did for pbs and for the bbc. And it is basically, i suppose, a kind of opinionated history of american art. Cspan and theres this which is a special of time requests magazine. Guest its not a condensation of the book, that had to be written again from scratch. I wrote the whole issue, something ive never tried before. But its amazing what the prospect of hanging can do. Cspan the Television Series is over, or at least its run on public television. Guest yeah. Cspan and youve, the books been in the bookstores for a couple months, the magazine is out. How do you feel . Guest intentionally relieved and very like going fishing. Its a wringout, you know, a project like this. The whole thing took me four years, and i was more or less on the road promoting it. And the, there was no be rest for the ungodly. And im just glad its over, and im glad it came out well. Cspan theres also a lot of copy thats been written about you. Guest oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Well, not during the whole period. You know, i crashed at the end of the series. I mean, it wasnt a fatal crash, but i woke up one morning, and i thought, yikes, life is devoid of meaning and horrible in all respects. I mean, i dont know whether youve suffered from this, but, yeah, its a medical problem. Suddenly grow horns and a tail. I must say my wife rather felt as though she was dealing with a little creature, an alien sometimes. But, no, no kidding, it was bad. And it was caused by overwork, you know, with all the trials, of course, that go back into childhood. But anyway, i sort of woke up and realized, well, ive got to write this damn book, ive got to write 200 and something thousand words of copy in the next nine months. So i had to put myself more or less on military discipline, you know, get up at 4 00 every morning and have my tea. I was too wired up to have coffee which, you know, was a nuisance, but there it was. And write 121500 words a day. And do four miles a day on the treadmill if possible. And just bang it through. Because if the series comes out and you dont have a book there, obviously, its not the best business practice. No, it was, it was very hard. Cspan whats it feel like when you get depression . Guest it feels terrible. You know, the luckily, if youve just got one thing to concentrate on, you can concentrate on that. If i hadnt had the book the write, i would have been in big trouble. The, you feel as though your life is essentially without meaning, you know, the stuff that youve done is not going to last and that the, how can i put it, it deprives you of pleasure in the company of others. It makes you sort of selfenclosed without being successfully introspective. And its an altogether miserable business. So what i did was i, you know, did what i would never have contemplated it normally, finally at the age of 57 i went to a shrink. But, you see, good catholic boys dont go to shrinks. What they do is they go to confession, and that sort of gets rid of the, of the, you know, the one part of it without actually sorting anything out. So i went to see a shrink, i took drugs, i, you know, and ive got to say it all helped a lot. The shrink was a fellow fisherman, and it was a little difficult to sort out whether we were discussing, you know, fly fishing for striped bass and deeper problems, but we did in the end. Cspan when was this picture taken . Guest about two month ago. Cspan where is it . Guest its in my loft. The bear and spartan missing appearance of the loft is not a matter of set dressing. The book shelves, you see, are empty. Im moving all my books out in order to rebuild the loft. Cspan where is the loft . Guest on the corner of prince and west broadway in soho in new york. Cspan how long have you lived there . Guest since 1970, 71. Yeah, thats right, 1971. I moved to new york in 1970. I stayed in the Chelsea Hotel for a few months and somebody said to me actually, it was barbara, the person that we referred to earlier said to me, you know, if you want cheap, large space, then there are these really cheap, big warehouses down in this unnamed part of new york. A lot of artists were living there, i went and got one. Cspan and when i read about this painting, one of the i guess it may not be new, but it was new to me, you talked about the artist being a closet homosexual. Guest yes. Cspan is that well known . Guest i think its well known. Grant wood. I mean, whether he was a practicing gay, i have absolutely no idea. I mean, he was a man of pictorially very refined tastes, and he had a, i mean, far from being the sturdy son of the midwestern soil, i mean, he was, n. , born in iowa, true, and he lived there a good deal of his life. But the big influences on him were 15th century flemish portrait painting with its very high finish and intense concentration of craft, and it is said his mothers china. And periodically grant wood could be prevailed on, yes, there i am in front of the house in american gothic. Its a fake house which has been built closer to grant woods [inaudible] but sometimes he would be prevailed upon to put on a pair of blue bib overalls and, you know, sort of stand in close proximity to a tree so as to look like a farmer. But that was all part of the promotion. [laughter] of american regionalism in the 30s. Cspan what does can it mean that so many Different Companies have used this grant wood painting for their own advertising . Guest it means that its the american mona lisa. Now, the fame of a painting is a really mysterious thing. Nobody really knows whether mona lisa got famous, although i have some theories. This one became fantastically famous. I think in part through its ambiguity. I mean, first of all, its a very, very memorable image, one which strikes deep into peoples ancestral memory or what they would like it to be. There he is, the stern puritan father holding up the pitchfork be, defending the virtue of his not very alluring daughter. And the it is humorous and at the same time its hard to be sure whether hes, whether wood was praising that kind of midwestern rectitude or not. So People Project on it. That comes from a painting by gilbert stuart, the socalled no, not the [inaudible] stuart got to paint washington three times. This is derived from the unfinished picture, and, of course, its on the american dollar bill. Thats the canonical image of george washington. Cspan what do you think of americans putting this painting on the dollar bill . Guest i think its a good idea. Its not a reproduction of the painting, but it is a version of. There it is, yes, thats washington. And as you can see, its reversed by the engraving, you know, in that one hes facing to his guest you tie the president up indefinitely with painting ops. And so there was a real demand for effigies of washington. Also served by people like the [inaudible] i mean, i think it was rafael no, it wasnt rafael. Oh, my god, im getting confused. Charles wilson peel was the father who founded this dynasty of artists, and one of his sons specialized in portraits of washington just like his dad had. And there are hundreds of them all over the United States. And, but, of course, this is an age before mechanical reproduction, and here we have copley, certainly the greatest american portraitist of the 18th century, and this is, again, its an iconical image of paul revere, you know, the intelligent, skeptical, determined american craftsman citizen. Its one of the archetypal portraits of a skilled american. Cspan you can see there this actual painting was on the cover of David Hackett fishers book of paul revere. Guest thats right. Cspan and they pointed out what hes got his happened around, you can see the reflection of guest you can see the reflection of the window which is behind the artist. And that burning spot on the silver teapot that revere has just finished making is a reflection of the window and, of course, thats the light source for all the light in the picture. Cspan whats so special about this particular artist, Jonathan Singleton copley . Guest a lot of things, but i would say the thing that is most special was, well, he was the first resident american to really make a rather grand style out of what was actually rather liney and plain and, you know, came out of the new england tradition. He couldnt at first attain the sort of grace notes of 8th century 18th century english Portrait Church but with that extremely craftsmanlike approach of his, he produced something which i think was more valuable, sort of completely sober, unflatter, all the moles and warts and whims in place, you know . And, you know, he was the first Great American empire cyst which, i might add, this guy that were looking at now, john trumble, was not. I mean, trumble yearned to be a history painter. The problem with being a history painter in the 1820s was that americans then as now were less interested in their own past than in their a own future. Theres a very interesting letter from, i think, adam mr. Trumble madison to mr. Trumble on this subject saying i see no interest in the public around us in the commemoration of the events of the revolution. If this was when the negotiation was going on for the four pictures which now decorate the rotunda of the capitol here in washington. Already americans, in other words, were complaining about the selective amnesia of their citizenry. Cspan how do you do all this . Guest how do i do it . Cspan yeah. Guest how do you remember all this, how do you guest man, ive been over the ears in it for the last five years. [laughter] you know, i mean, my main problem is going to be clearing the stuff out of my hand in order to get on with the book on goya. Cspan but when we see you in your least exciting moment, what are you doing . How did you compile all of this information and get to be such an expert . Guest ive been an art critic working in america for 27 years. Inevitably, some stuff rubs off. But im extremely curious about america in the way that foreigners are. Im not a citizen. Im a australian, but nevertheless, im whats called an alien resident, you know . One of them. Cspan you going to stay that way . Guest yeah. Cspan why . Guest yeah. My wifes american. They cant take that green card away from me, not now. I havent said anything bad about clinton in this book, you know . [laughter] no, im going to stay that way because beyond a certain age, and im 58, the leopard has difficulty changing his spots. I mean, for instance, im interested in politics, but the only country in which i can be politically active is australia. And it would seem sort of ridiculous to abandon my australian citizenship when my family has been active there for so long. I mean, im not coming from somewhere in order to completely remake myself. You know . Cspan your family, what, you had a brother that was attorney general . Guest my brother tom, yeah, during the vietnam years. He was attorney general at the same time, actually, that mitchell was the attorney general here. He met mitchell. You know, he was given a trip over here to find out more and better ways of dumping on vietnam protesters, and hes horrified by mitchell because tom is a true conservative and not an egregious schemer like mitchell. Anyway [laughter] there was, no, i mean, our lot have been pretty much embroiled in australian politics since the 1900s, the early 1900s. And, you know, theres a Family History there that im proud of and would not wish to renege on. Cspan go back to my original question, how do you do all this in in other words, where do you work . Guest i work at home. I have a house on Shelter Island and a barn. Upstairs in the barn is a writing room, downstairs is my wood shop. When i run out of paragraphs, i go down and absent mindedly cut a few dovetails. I didnt get the [inaudible] once during the whole year. I didnt catch a blue fish. I caught a couple of bass on fly, that was it. But anyway, i have my art library there. Half of the top floor of the barn is books, half is writing room. I get up early in the morning and, you know, i do what you do, i work. And i find it excellent for concentration. Its a little frustrating because, you know, unlike other parts of eastern long island, theres absolutely no social life of any description which is actually quite a good thing. I mean, all those hot shot agents with their big tort linney salads are afraid of the water, and so they dont come across on the ferry. [laughter] and also, you know, if youre at some utterly boring dinner party, you can jump up, or my wife can jump up with a strecken expression on her stricken expression on her face and say its 9 00, the last ferry believes at 9 45, im terribly sorry, samantha, we have to go. Look, the biggest lesson about work i ever had because when i was in my 20s, i thought it was done by inspiration. It was from Allan Moorhead and was my surrogate father as a writer. And he did this thing which i found utterly incomprehensible. It seemed so strange. He would i get up at 6 00 in the morning, and at seven hed be up the hill at back of his place in italy, and he would stay there until 3 1 00. He 11 he wouldnt take telephone calls, he wouldnt do anything like that. And surprise, surprise, at the end of the morning hed usually have 700 words. Cspan some points you have an exceptional memory. Guest i think its beginning to decay a bit under the influence of age and booze. No, i have a very good memory. When i was a boy and was at jesuit school, they would make you memorize huge chunks of stuff. But i had a some people found this onerous. I found it delightful. I mean, i can still im not going to do it, but i can still quote from numerous shakespearean tragedies. I could recite you the wasteland by heart, if you like. But im not going to. [laughter] weve got Better Things to do. Cspan now, this is interestingly enough in the magazine version which this is, the Time Magazine special, the pictures, its a lot bigger. Guest yes, it is. Cspan in the book. Guest yes. Cspan by the way, what is this . Guest that is a painting painted in the 18 t 0s called memories of 1865 by John Frederick peter who was a magic realist who, whose paintings actually were quite popular in america. One of the interesting things about peter is that he has this exceptionally nostalgic kind of coding, you know . Its called memories of 65 because thats the year lincoln was assassinated. And theres this old rusty bowie knife which was one of his studio props picked up on a civil war battlefield, and its hanging over the image of lincoln like the sword over damocles, and the deliberation of the thing is shown by that card which reads something of the house which was a common kind of card used, i think, in table settings at the time, and it originally read head of the house, so the knife is figuratively cutting off the held, and its an illusion to the assassination of the president. Cspan what do you think of art around lincoln . Just lincoln in general. Is there a lot of it guest theres a tremendous amount of photography. Lincoln was the first president whose image was really, really ramified by photography. But thats, of course, theres a popular demand. He was the first president in the age of photography who really was regarded as popular, you know, in an almost demmegod like way at least for northerners. But official paintings of lincoln are, for the most part, pretty dull. You know, as american or any other official portrait tends to be. Its the photographs that we remember him by. Cspan now this is on the cover one we see all the time, the american flag, but its guest by jasper jones. Cspan when was this done . Guest 1955, and what a stir it caused then. Strangely enough cspan whysome. Guest well, because, you know, it caused a big stir in the art world because people couldnt be sure if they were looking at a flag or an image of a flag. It clearly was an image of flag, but if so, the painting consisted merely of the flag, and it set up all sorts of philosophical vibrations around itself. The one thing that didnt happen was like later artists, jones didnt run into any flak for defacing the flag. Cspan who is he . Guest jones is now well, hes certainly one of americas leading painters. He was always bracketed in the 50z. 50s. Hes sometimes regarded as one of the founders of pop art, but hes not really because pop art is a very different kind of enterprise to jones. But jones was infatuated with popular culture, and he wanted to find images that were so well known but not well seen; flags, targets, stuff like that. And i think, you know, the early work up until about 1960 its always a terrible thing to say you like an artists earlier work better than his late, but i do without disrespect. Cspan do americans treat the flag different than other countries . Guest absolutely. Theyre obsessed with the flag. In australia, you dont have those rituals surrounding it. In america there are specified ways of folding it, politicians always wish to bring in, many of them would like to see an actual amendment to the constitution protecting this icon from deface bement or burning or what have you. I mean, if you burnt an australian flag, you know, nobody would give a damn which is why i guess people dont burn them. [laughter] the flag to americans is a curious kind of almost living presence. It has this sort of eucharistic aspect which it generally lacks in other countries. I mean, i dare say if you pulled out a tricolor, you know, and starts ostentatiously trampling on it in paris, some cop might come up and give you a whack and tell you to move along. But they dont have constitutional amendments about it, i think. As for the union but then theres that double side because one wants to preserve, americans like to preserve the flag against blasphemy or defacement, but at the same time, they make everything out of it from, you know, girls underpants to advertising signs at gas stations. I mean, nobody thinks theres anything weird, which i do rather, about the gas station surrounding itself with hundreds of old glories just for the purpose of advertising. I mean, that sort of seems i have a next door neighbor out on Shelter Island, well, not quite next door, who has this flag pole in the back of his house, and at night old glory goes up, and he has a spotlight on it. And its sort of irritating, actually. You wonder why hes making such a flap doodle over it. Is it to say im american, i live in america . We know hes american, we know he lives in america. Its nutty. Hes a retired cop. Anyway [laughter] cspan let me, ive got a bunch of reviews here that, you know, Television Shows long since passed by the way, is it available . Guest oh, yes. Absolutely. Please do. Cspan whats it cost, do you know . Guest i dont know. I do not concern myself with these mundane occupations. I think, actually, they havent priced it. Cspan the Washington Post wrote this about the television thing, and when did you first think about doing television . Guest 1982 after id finished [inaudible] cspan and something called american visions popped in your head . Guest well, it wasnt called american visions then. I was looking around, and i thought, you know, there is a terrific subject here, and its really strange, a terrific subject for television, and its really weird that nobody in america has tried this one. And so i start ised checking it out. Started checking it out. And more i did, the more convinced i became that there was, you know, a really interesting Television Series to be made about american art and social leanings, as it were. And originally i wanted to do ten programs. There wasnt the money for that. And there wasnt any money for it initially. I mean, the bbc shelfed it because they were going through a sort of period of the mtv itchys, you know . The didactic mini is series was a miniseries was a thing of the past. This sort of stuff was extinct. Its not extinct. It never will be. Cspan let me just read you what the review said. Hughes set out to paint an epic, a mural of america through its churches, chairs, cars, its newness and its rectitudes, it follies and injustices and its art world hype. But then the medium trapped him. His series, a coproduction of bbc ii and time warner, was created by committees, by teams of tv specialists. Hughes never got to paint the mural he envisioned, he only got to sketch. Guest ah. Its partly true and partly not. It is true that the nature of television somewhat changes the arguments you can make, you know, television back for abstract argument. Its good for show and tell. It demands a simple narrative. Very simple. Iconically so. And the, and its certainly true that the book is richer than the Television Series. But i think that in terms of what telly can do, series is reasonably successful. There are parts of it that are hokey, but im not going to tell you what they are. Im sure you know what they are anyhow. [laughter] i mean, what richards essentially is saying here is that the book is a better account than the Television Series of american art and its various ramifications, and i would not disagree with him there, it is. But at the same time, i think the series has a certain value and interest, potentially for people who might have no previous experience, not much previous experience with american art. Cspan how long did it take you to do the Television Part 134. Guest it took three years. Cspan three years total concentration . Guest yeah. I was thinking about that before then, and i would send resentful fact toss the bbc saying, you know, why dont you get off the pot, you know . The actual planning and work on it was about three years. The civil war from a 30 years ago, this series has to function as an extended commercial for the buck. Cspan what do they say to you . Guest i love it. Cspan what did they say about america . Guest they thought it was very fair and reasonable and balanced portrait of america, a few jabs. In the same of england. This is a curious thing. Ammine a couple of brother crank as critics have said that this serious was intended as an assault upon the image of america, this weird little foreign. Nothing could be further from the truth. But the idea of having a souffle was none would be intolerable. Steve for a conservative publication by the weekly standard, a fellow by the name of david and not sure i am reading this right, bill clinton, probably not pronouncing that right in apologized. News you can use. Art critics and american visions. American culture is in deep trouble in todays u. S. Art is largely guest that is not what im saying. American culture is in some trouble. Quite a lot of what has been promoted to over the last ten or 15 years, but i am not painting a native picture. Cspan he also says non americanist when he convinces us that the crisis is grave but has no ideas about how to fix it. Guest you know, when a car begins to slow down amid curious noises from the transmission from underneath the hood, you dont actually need to be in engineered is see that something is going wrong with it. And i am deeply tired of people with quick cultural fixes. Theres a whole industry, as you well know, in washington , of i mean all the way from eight to be. And the there is this whole industry trying to persuade people the movements in the direction of virtue and charity, fix what is wrong with america. I dont think that any canadian know, if there is one single way of fixing what is wrong, i am quite aware of it. I think the truth is that they do go into a sort of slap water sometimes spirited the bill into down times. It is entirely possible. If you had better, but i dont think that would be an automatic and a quick fix. It is very hard today to navigate satisfactorily in the cultural environment in which so much is taken up by mass media. This was not a problem in the 19th century. Competing with mass medium, television, film. Peoples sense of reality is almost generated by mass media today, media by a. But the arts of painting and sculpture seen distinctly powerless against the cataract of images and we get. The. Cspan amateur places to go in this country to see the best american art. Guest would send them to the lebron museum in new york. Washington. The National Museum of american art is probably the fundamental connection. Now, the strange thing is, it is not as wellknown as it ought to be buried a complete impossibility to. Not all that well known in comparison. Cspan the one connected to the National Portrait gallery. Guest yes. And its connection is really extraordinarily interesting. Here in washington. Those who love this. Theres no single place moreover, chicago but the south of the note, it depends on what youre looking for. I would certainly send them to chicago for the National Museum. The art institute, the museum which has some very good things. Cspan if you could have any american art in their homes and. Guest would it be . The great opera. Cspan f2 by sunday. Guest too great for me. Sunday morning, such an extraordinary picture. Cspan who is at hopper . Good lord. Guest was a deeply indebted professional and spectacular artist to told more truth about the spiritual condition than anybody else in the 1930s. He was an extraordinary public. In the can see from the pictures, very deeply formed end the spices between people. Just about anybody. You know, the economic or american pictures. He had a tremendous effect on popular culture. Winehouse on the prairie. Cspan when did he live . Guest died in 1967. I cant remember his birth date. A place as you can see. That haunting picture with the blonde standing in the doorway them and the Little Cottage in the select. A wonderful picture. And he really defined the american multinationals. That is in part a picture, shifting a little bit that way and you can see the portrait of his wife yelling at him. This gas station he is been bypassed by history. His wife is nagging him. Cspan who else would you put in your home . Anything, anything american. Guest welcome i cant say i would turn down a greg pollack. I would like to have i would like to have one really, really good Winslow Hammond the greatest watercolors cents turner, extraordinary and also, one which i do love. That this in the National Gallery here. Cspan well, a man who is for this favor of words. He started off with the rap because of the solar. Guest he was there at the front in the 1860s. This picture here of, a new field probably i think the most least directive of pictures to do with the civil war appeared in the man has come back. He is bearing the weight. But also the terrible massacres, the town of gettysburg. Prisoners from the front, yon officers, these three prisoners to me know, this hellfire kentucky on the front, you know, mean as hell there is another man who is too old to change. Too young to know anything. The pesetas is an objective picture. Of course it is not. Cspan you mention in your book and a lot of people write about your position on slavery, one of the biggest problems in the event. Guest slavery itself was the naturally. It is an interesting fact. Does not, you know, i mean certainly there are 19 century genre paintings of slaves, and there is one really did want by eastman johnson. A very fine picture. But by and large it does not show up much in a point of record. The and when they do theyre usually in the form of, you know, jolly old lion know, sort of like opera. It presents the slave household as a kind of symbol arcadian or tends to. Cspan talking about your Television Show and your special for Time Magazine in your book, and now the sales of its Television Show. Is this going to make a lot of money for you. Guest i hope so. I would be a hypocrite in the fourth to deny the above would. Cspan is it going well . Guest how much money or not. Cspan is it going well . Guest it will take a while to ship a hundred thousand and 65 per, but i have no doubt there will be are repenting by christmas. This is actually, if i can say so without sounding like some sort of Snake Oil Salesman and i think this book actually does phil and it does find its unleash in america. People are really curious. Much more so than there were divvied up me much more so than i had first thought. So much of the american story is inscribed. I think of me know, and general interest. Cspan how many of the specials were printed . Guest half a million for the newsstands. And for a half million for subscribers. Cspan and how many of the videos . Guest i have no idea. The more ad hoc way. You dont have to do all big addition of various. And here it marked for the demand. Cspan we talked earlier about depression. Have you gone over all that . Xbox. Guest oh, yes. Eightyfour what got you out of it . Guest hard work. Cspan what would you recommend, what would you avoid . Guest dont be ashamed about it. Dont think you can basher way through it. Just remember, its going to pass. Which is hardest thing of all remember dividend above all, you know, try and get on, you know. I mean, if youve done some project to my seat and i am very lucky. I do things that i really like doing. Most people dont. But if your lucky enough to do that, you know, use it. Cspan how would you avoid it . Guest you cant. It is like treading on a water moccasin. You dont know its there. Its very quick and it and it is, of course, totally unfair that it. Could just have no idea what is happening seventh. It is not as though you wake up one morning in the internal of this changed. But you know, in my case it changed over about a week. I couldnt. And it just kept rolling. Cspan and have you feel that this project is over . Guest immensely relieved, opal, and really looking forward to a holiday. Im going to go to australia to. I have a weeks promotion to go with the book their parents and then i am going topless trillion. It is just full of big fish, you know, crocodiles the would not want to meet. Im going to take my godson with me. His father who has never been there. And we shall sit around the camp for and boyle mud crabs and sings sad songs about women. Cspan have many children do you have . Guest once on. Nearly 40. Cspan what does he do . Guest he is a sculptor. Cspan and your wife speak to my present wife victoria, she is a garden designer. She does and mean basically, you know, she is with they used to call a housewife. Cspan where did you meet your . Guest she picked me up the pace was during a lecture. And after a certain amount of preamble this beautiful redhead appear from of the audience. And we have been tomorrow less ever since. I was very, very lucky. Cspan and you have. Guest yes, but enough to not difficult it is. Exhibitions, you know, the sales from them what sustained me as a writer. But then in 64, i realized, just about the only completely art free time and all of elite. And i realized. They used to go every year. I used to. I get a harley. And nothing of suit. And does not a large caliber. Was about 400. But so i went to every resident. God knows what in the circle up to florence and siena. At the end give three and a half years i never studied history. I realized i had seen an awful lot of stuff. So i am very, very i am a very strong believer in the relation of works of art. A huge difference if, say, youre looking at the back of a 15th century italian crucifixion. Pierre robo francesca. And when you walk outside, the landscape and the hills. And it gives the thing allocation to my cultural context. All sorts of ramifications of that. Cspan how much formal education to have . Guest quite a lot of the have no university degrees. The eddy was that i could be a lawyer. And so it was thought beneficial the residue combination. That way i would not be a complete barbarian played and i just got out of this sporting school, infantile testosterone for Something Like five years. And of course, he dont think of anything but girls and university dividend is succeeded in failing first year arts which was a course for reasonably intelligent ameba could pass. And so confusion perritt twitter reply to deal with the delinquent conservatives what i said i want to go a way to paris. Out painted of the connecticut women paid and welcome back and let him do that. Sort of compromise studying architecture. But i never completed my degree in architecture. He was interested in pretty lectured a little bit of a book on the subject, there was no general book on the subject. So anyway, a commission may write about it. Still in print. Kim and 1966. Cspan i have all these reviews here. The headline here. The allies of Robert Hughes, the worlds most famous art critic, down under and a man ready to trace his own gun powder trails. And then you have peter who wrote in newsweek, now that is our competitor, newsweek said rains over american art criticism. I could sit here and read all these other reviews. Guest look, i have to tell you, i am deeply grateful for saying these complementary things, but that has to be pointed out, being the worlds most famous art critic, if thats what i am his mother like being the worlds most famous beekeeper. I mean, it does not guarantee al of a lot. His eyes and because i read for times, of course. For newsweek. And you have an automatic belts in circulation member. But listen, i would be a hypocrite if i said i did not enjoy that type of stuff they be fun as the ticket with a grain of salt. Go round thumping and the doors of restaurants and saying a one a table for six right now, you become some intolerable beast. Cspan in the review he says you are in English Speaking in the list. Guest oh, my god. What am i supposed to say . Yes, maam. Well, no, i am not. I mean, tremendous the flattering there could be anybody intelligent out there that thinks so is, but i do not believe that this book has the same fundamental value. That is a work called portable war memorial had a tremendously Strong Political artist who took over the dark side of american writers. And, yes, it is an antiwar satire. On the left you can see their version of the marines raising the flag at he was human. Uncle sam behind the. But, you know, on the blackboard what you cant read off the names of some to buy 300 countries would cease to exist because of what it. Threonine states. And then the average american couple, having a hot dog. And then, you know, what it is about the more experimental and critical frame of mind. Among american artists. I mean, really the idea that art should have functions other than official once really, only came to america but the same time as it did to the rest of the world. Cspan whatever happens are like this . Guest people still love it. The christmas turkey. I put that in there for obvious reasons. It had an enormous effect upon the american imagination nobody knows what his paintings look like in the sense that no one has ever seen the original. There were all designed for reduction. But he was one of the most powerful the seven measures of a certain kind of american dream. If there has ever been. I mean, you know, i dont think he is rembrandt. But the tendency to write off, particularly if youre looking, you can write him off. Cspan are more than one occasion we have found this bill read in a lot of books that were written, including one about Eleanor Roosevelt these sigell out there and sit and look at this. Guest that is in accordance statue, is commemoratives figure which has no name, no title. Was in a fury commissioned in which atoms commemorate his wife. Henry adams. And san gordons, a country mile, the best american of the 19th century to do it. I dont think there have been to unquestioningly great. A lot of good ones, but to unquestionably a great, one is the 19th century, and the other was in the 20th century. And so gordon was a tremendously interesting figure. Cspan whats next . Guest i have to honor my commitment spirit if that sounds a bit of enthusiastic it is not meant to be. It is going to take a long time to do it. And not try to do anymore television for while 11 asseses series of an australian but it is terribly disruptive than that dont know. I think perhaps as a result and then out of introspection i might actually write a memoir to about growing up catholic and australia. Except that, you know, it would be quite unlike most memoirs. Nothing nasty will happen in the woodshed. There will be no behind the sacristy. None of that happened. Was a fairly happy kid. Cspan if you were in american and could vote in this country, which verdugo . The reason i ask that is because youre characterized and a lot of these reviews as hitting the right and left. Guest thats right perrys italian the truth, every other field of play on both your part is the moment i have an intense dislike of clinton. Is manipulation, hypocrisy, you know, that awful sort of brand of pseudo therapeutics almost dragging out and waiting in the air. But on the other end, you know, i would not vote for the party and it gingrich or dick armey or any of those guys. So in a way, i mean, probably that would tip toward the democrats but with reluctance. Cspan what do you think the future of america is . Guest i dont know, but i hope on around to see it. An absolute decline list. In a think theyre going through a bit of a rough patch the strong cultural ties running, at least i mean one thing is for sure. People are going to keep on making art in america, keep on making images that explain themselves to one another and to themselves. You know, there is always going to be that desire in america because it just seems to be implanted in humankind. In what form it will take and i really dont know. Cspan why did you practice with a cover . Guest because tomatoes you a bit of a story. Tells you, to a, one of the major themes of the book. In the affect of landscape this heroic at dia. Lightning striking at the polls that have been put up there is. It is better. It tells that part of the story very concisely and it is dramatic. Cspan and our time is up. The cover of the book. It is called american visions. And our guest has been Robert Hughes. Thank you very much. Guest thank you very much. Book tv asks but stores and libraries throughout the country about the nonfiction books they are most anticipating being published this fall. Here is a look at some of the titles chosen by the free library of philadelphia