Top art critic to lecture

Press, 26 February 1986, Page 18

Top art critic to lecture

“Time” magazine senior writer Robert Hughes, the art critic and presenter of the highly acclaimed 1980 8.8. C. television series “The Shock of the New,” will deliver Victoria University’s Chancellor’s Lectures this year in midMarch. The Australian-born Mr Hughes, whose visit to New Zealand is co-spon-sored by the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, has made more than 20 television documentaries on the visual arts and is in demand in the United States as a public speaker and guest lecturer. He is the author of four major books on Australian and western art.

Attracting Mr Hughes to New Zealand has been a

major coup, according to Victoria University Pro-Vice-Chancellor Mr W. E. Dasent.

Awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts by New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1982, Robert Hughes started his career, • after degree studies in art and architecture at the University of Sydney, with a brief period as a cartoonist and illustrator for the Sydney “Telegraph.”

From 1958 he worked as a freelance art critic, first for Sydney papers and magazines and then from 1963 for the London “Observer,” "Sunday Tiroes” “Spectator” and the “London Magazine.” Early in his career he was an award-winning abstract painter and his

work is represented in private and public collections.

As a critic he won acclaim in Australia for introducing a new dynamism into art writing, for his 1965 book on the Sydney artist Donald Friend, his 1966 Penguin volume “The Art of Australia,” and his 1968 book “Heaven and Hell in Western Art.”

By the time of his appointment in 1970 as art critic for “Time” magazine he was the regular critic for the “London Magazine,” a frequent broadcaster and television commentator, and had published writings on art, politics and travel for leading newspapers. Since that appointment, and later as a senior

member of the editorial staff of “Time” magazine, he has consolidated his reputation with his 1975 10-part television series on “The Art of Australia” and then the 1980 eightpart 8.8. C. series “The Shock of the New.” In Wellington Mr Hughes will deliver three evening lectures at Victoria University — on Tuesday, March 18 on “Tradition versus Postmodernism;” on Thursday, March 20 on “The Traffic-jam in The Ivory Tower” and on Friday, March 21 on “Art and Money.” On Monday, March 24 Mr Hughes will deliver an evening lecture in the Michael Fowler Centre as part of the International Festival of the Arts.