the predator drone. also books about vladimir putin's russia, border security, the collection and use of personal data and much more. and for more information on this weekend's 48-hour 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 it's produced. this is about an hour. c-span: robert hughes, in the new yorker piece on ama, there's 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 wasn't my first visit to the united states, but it was the one that caused all the trouble. c-span: why were you coming here for "time" magazine? >> guest: because they'd 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 i'd 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 then-managing editor of "time" who said, well, let's 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 i'd 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 didn't mention was i'd come from italy, and i had all these bags with an herbal mixture which i'd 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 what's that stuff? i said it's potpourri. he said, what? i said, potpourri. p-o -- [laughter] be so i nearly didn't make it into the united states. c-span: 27 years later, this has been in bookstores for a couple of months. what is it? >> guest: this? it's a book. it's called "american visions" which my editor subtitled "the epic history of art in america." it's 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. c-span: and there's this which is a special of "time requests magazine. >> guest: it's not a condensation of the book, that had to be written again from scratch. i wrote the whole issue, something i've never tried before. but it's amazing what the prospect of hanging can do. c-span: the television series is over, or at least it's run on public television. >> guest: yeah. c-span: and you've, the book's been in the bookstores for a couple months, the magazine is out. how do you feel? >> guest: intentionally relieved and very like going fishing. it's 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 i'm just glad it's over, and i'm glad it came out well. c-span: there's also a lot of copy that's 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 wasn't 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 don't know whether you've suffered from this, but, yeah, it's 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, i've got to write this damn book, i've 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 12-1500 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 don't have a book there, obviously, it's not the best business practice. no, it was, it was very hard. c-span: what's it feel like when you get depression? >> guest: it feels terrible. you know, the -- luckily, if you've just got one thing to concentrate on, you can concentrate on that. if i hadn't 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 you've 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 self-enclosed without being successfully introspective. and it's 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 don't 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 i've 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. c-span: when was this picture taken? >> guest: about two month ago. c-span: where is it? >> guest: it's 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. i'm moving all my books out in order to rebuild the loft. c-span: where is the loft? >> guest: on the corner of prince and west broadway in soho in new york. c-span: how long have you lived there? >> guest: since 1970, '71. yeah, that's 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. c-span: 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. c-span: is that well known? >> guest: i think it's 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 mother's china. and periodically grant wood could be prevailed on, yes, there i am in front of the house in "american gothic." it's a fake house which has been built closer to grant wood's -- [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. c-span: what does can it mean that so many different companies have used this grant wood painting for their own advertising? >> guest: it means that it's 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, it's a very, very memorable image, one which strikes deep into people's 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 it's hard to be sure whether he's, 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 so-called -- no, not the -- [inaudible] stuart got to paint washington three times. this is derived from the unfinished picture, and, of course, it's on the american dollar bill. that's the canonical image of george washington. c-span: what do you think of americans putting this painting on the dollar bill? >> guest: i think it's a good idea. it's not a reproduction of the painting, but it is a version of. there it is, yes, that's washington. and as you can see, it's reversed by the engraving, you know, in that one he's 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 wasn't rafael. oh, my god, i'm 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, it's an iconical image of paul revere, you know, the intelligent, skeptical, determined american craftsman/citizen. it's one of the archetypal portraits of a skilled american. c-span: you can see there this actual painting was on the cover of david hackett fisher's book of paul revere. >> guest: that's right. c-span: and they pointed out what he's 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, that's the light source for all the light in the picture. c-span: what's 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 couldn't 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 we're 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. there's 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. c-span: how do you do all this? >> guest: how do i do it? c-span: yeah. >> guest: how do you remember all this, how do you -- >> guest: man, i've 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. c-span: 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: i've been an art critic working in america for 27 years. inevitably, some stuff rubs off. but i'm extremely curious about america in the way that foreigners are. i'm not a citizen. i'm a australian, but nevertheless, i'm what's called an alien resident, you know? one of them. c-span: you going to stay that way? >> guest: yeah. c-span: why? >> guest: yeah. my wife's american. they can't take that green card away from me, not now. i haven't said anything bad about clinton in this book, you know? [laughter] no, i'm going to stay that way because beyond a certain age, and i'm 58, the leopard has difficulty changing his spots. i mean, for instance, i'm 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, i'm not coming from somewhere in order to completely remake myself. you know? c-span: 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 he's 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, there's a family history there that i'm proud of and would not wish to renege on. c-span: 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 didn't get the -- [inaudible] once during the whole year. i didn't 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. it's a little frustrating because, you know, unlike other parts of eastern long island, there's 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 don't come across on the ferry. [laughter] and also, you know, if you're 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 it's 9:00, the last ferry believes at 9:45, i'm 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 he'd be up the hill at back of his place in italy, and he would stay there until 3 1:00. he -- 11:he wouldn't take telephone calls, he wouldn't do anything like that. and surprise, surprise, at the end of the morning he'd usually have 700 words. c-span: some points you have an exceptional memory. >> guest: i think it's 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 -- i'm 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 i'm not going to. [laughter] we've got better things to do. c-span: now, this is -- interestingly enough in the magazine version which this is, the "time" magazine special, the pictures, it's a lot bigger. >> guest: yes, it is. c-span: in the book. >> guest: yes. c-span: 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? it's called "memories of '65" because that's the year lincoln was assassinated. and there's this old rusty bowie knife which was one of his studio props picked up on a civil war battlefield, and it's 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 it's an illusion to the assassination of the president. c-span: what do you think of art around lincoln? just lincoln in general. is there a lot of it -- >> guest: there's a tremendous amount of photography. lincoln was the first president whose image was really, really ramified by photography. but that's, of course, there's a popular demand. he was the first president in the age of photography who really was regarded as popular, you know, in an almost demme-god 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. it's the photographs that we remember him by. c-span: now this is on the cover one we see all the time, the american flag, but it's -- >> guest: by jasper jones. c-span: when was this done? >> guest: 1955, and what a stir it caused then. strangely enough -- c-span: whysome. >> guest: well, because, you know, it caused a big stir in the art world because people couldn't 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 didn't happen was like later artists, jones didn't run into any flak for defacing the flag. c-span: who is he? >> guest: jones is now -- well, he's certainly one of america's leading painters. he was always bracketed in the '50z. '50s. he's sometimes regarded as one of the founders of pop art, but he's 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 -- it's always a terrible thing to say you like an artist's earlier work better than his late, but i do without disrespect. c-span: do americans treat the flag different than other countries? >> guest: absolutely. they're obsessed with the flag. in australia, you don't 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 don't 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 don't have constitutional amendments about it, i think. as for the union -- but then there's 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 there's 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 it's sort of irritating, actually. you wonder why he's making such a flap doodle over it. is it to say i'm american, i live in america? we know he's american, we know he lives in america. it's nutty. he's a retired cop. anyway -- [laughter] c-span: let me, i've 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. c-span: what's it cost, do you know? >> guest: i don't know. i do not concern myself with these mundane occupations. i think, actually, they haven't priced it. c-span: the washington post wrote this about the television thing, and when did you first think about doing television? >> guest: 1982 after i'd finished -- [inaudible] c-span: and something called american visions popped in your head? >> guest: well, it wasn't called american visions then. i was looking around, and i thought, you know, there is a terrific subject here, and it's really strange, a terrific subject for television, and it's 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 wasn't the money for that. and there wasn't 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. it's not extinct. it never will be. c-span: 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 co-production 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. it's 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. it's good for show and tell. it demands a simple narrative. very simple. iconically so. and the, and it's 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 i'm not going to tell you what they are. i'm 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. c-span: how long did it take you to do the television part 134. >> guest: it took three years. c-span: 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 don't 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. c-span: what do they say to you? >> guest: i love it. c-span: 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 today's u.s. art is largely -- >> guest: that is not what i'm 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. c-span: 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 don't 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. there's 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 don't 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 don't 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. people's 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. c-span: 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 well-known as it ought to be buried a complete impossibility to. not all that well known in comparison. c-span: the one connected to the national portrait gallery. >> guest: yes. and its connection is really extraordinarily interesting. here in washington. those who love this. there's no single place moreover, chicago but the south of the note, it depends on what you're looking for. i would certainly send them to chicago for the national museum. the art institute, the museum which has some very good things. c-span: if you could have any american art in their homes and. >> guest: would it be? the great opera. c-span: f2 by sunday. >> guest: too great for me. sunday morning, such an extraordinary picture. c-span: 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 1930's. 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. c-span: when did he live? >> guest: died in 1967. i can't 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. c-span: who else would you put in your home? anything, anything american. >> guest: welcome i can't 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. c-span: 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 1860's. 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 peseta's is an objective picture. of course it is not. c-span: 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 they're 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. c-span: 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. c-span: is it going well? >> guest: how much money or not. c-span: 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. c-span: how many of the specials were printed? >> guest: half a million for the newsstands. and for a half million for subscribers. c-span: and how many of the videos? >> guest: i have no idea. the more ad hoc way. you don't have to do all big addition of various. and here it marked for the demand. c-span: we talked earlier about depression. have you gone over all that? xbox. >> guest: oh, yes. eighty-four what got you out of it? >> guest: hard work. c-span: what would you recommend, what would you avoid? >> guest: don't be ashamed about it. don't think you can basher way through it. just remember, it's going to pass. which is hardest thing of all remember dividend above all, you know, try and get on, you know. i mean, if you've done some project to my seat and i am very lucky. i do things that i really like doing. most people don't. but if your lucky enough to do that, you know, use it. c-span: how would you avoid it? >> guest: you can't. it is like treading on a water moccasin. you don't know it's there. it's 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 couldn't. and it just kept rolling. c-span: and have you feel that this project is over? >> guest: immensely relieved, opal, and really looking forward to a holiday. i'm going to go to australia to. i have a week's 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. i'm 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. c-span: have many children do you have? >> guest: once on. nearly 40. c-span: what does he do? >> guest: he is a sculptor. c-span: 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. c-span: 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. c-span: 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, you're 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. c-span: 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 don't 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. c-span: i have all these reviews here. the headline here. the allies of robert hughes, the world's 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 world's most famous art critic, if that's what i am his mother like being the world's 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. c-span: in the review he says you are in english speaking in the list. >> guest: oh, my god. what am i supposed to say? yes, ma'am. 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 anti-war 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 can't 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. c-span: 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 don't think he is rembrandt. but the tendency to write off, particularly if you're looking, you can write him off. c-span: 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 don't 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. c-span: what's 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 don't 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. c-span: if you were in american and could vote in this country, which verdugo? the reason i ask that is because you're characterized and a lot of these reviews as hitting the right and left. >> guest: that's right perry's 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. c-span: what do you think the future of america is? >> guest: i don't know, but i hope on around to see it. an absolute decline list. in a think they're 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 don't know. c-span: 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. c-span: 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 ..

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