Sunday, August 12, 2012

Robert Hughes reaches that Fatal Shore

Australian writer and art critic Robert Hughes (obituary here) died in New York on 6 August 2012. He was 74.

I didn’t read Robert Hughes’ 1987 best seller The Fatal Shore: The epic of Australia's founding properly. Perhaps I should have. To me, his natural acerbic style had tipped over into a bitterness and even weariness in which the prejudices formed during his period at school and as a member of the Sydney push had reached a natural flowering. Perhaps that was unfair. I thought that his 1981 production, the Shock of the New, had been magnificent. Compare the tone there with his 1997 television series American Visions. I still enjoyed it, but I now found that Hughes’s prejudices were standing in the way. In any event, I put The Fatal Shore Aside in the bookshop and have not returned to it since.

I first read Robert Hughes during what I now think of as my Australian art phase, that period in my life when Australian art and the interaction between it, history and culture had become a fascination. I had read Bernard Smith and found him good because his work provided a coherent structure that fitted my own knowledge, experiences and no doubt prejudices as well.

Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia (1966) challenged that structure. Whereas Smith reviewed Australian art and found it to be good, Hughes saw it as derivative, secondary, a minor by-blow in global terms. Hughes wrote brilliantly, the 28 year old enfant terrible challenging the old master; Smith was already fifty. While at the end I still preferred Smith, I did enjoy Hughes and his visual mastery; his ability to use words to bring a visual medium alive was quite remarkable. I also liked the way he set an international context even if I did not agree with his dismissal of the local.

There was must have been something in the Sydney water at the time, for Hughes was one of a number that would go on to achieve international fame. Clive James was another, Germaine Greer a third. I also suspect that Hughes’s time at St Ignatius played a part, for that school’s Jesuit tradition provided a framework for a boy who was brilliant but different, who might well not have fitted in at another more pedestrian place.

St Ignatius had another influence as well, one often seen among those leaving the all male strongly boarding environment for the freedom of university. He discovered women and promptly failed first year!

In all, Robert Hughes was a quite remarkable man, if also a very complex one.

Postscript:

Heartfelt tribute to Robert Hughes from Malcolm Turnbull

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I thought Fatal Shore was good - but then I haven't the knowledge to support my opinion, so maybe you're correct to have decided not to read it. Also, I much prefer 'ascerbic' to (is this the word?) saccharine - and I do always love a well-turned phrase, so Robert Hughes filled the bill - much as I loved Hitchens on other subjects.

Call me 'ascerbic' - I'd take that as a great compliment! 'saccharine' not so much.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Do you know, I wondered about the spelling of ascerbic. My spell checker was quite insistent!

I will look at Fatal Shore again. It's been a while since that bookshop visit. Saccharine is not quite the opposite, but if I had a choice I would go for the original.

Like you, I love a well turned phrase. But no matter how nice the phrase, it won't hold disagreement with underlying arguments.

Anonymous said...

Ha! Well I will add that word to my list of 'slow down and think' words. And to 'quote' it as well; error compounded!

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

It's a common mistake. I pronounce it sc.

Evan said...

Hi Jim, I thought Fatal Shore was great. It talked about areas (like convict experience) that usually get glossed over. And the prose was really good.

Jim Belshaw said...

I see your point, Evan. It's actually not true that the convict experience gets glossed. At least not from my reading. In fairness, when Robert Hughes first conceived the book not a lot had been written outside popular fiction.

The convict experience needs to be considered along at least two dimensions. One is the general social attitudes of the time, the second is the experience of convicts as compared to those who remained behind. Now when I browsed the book, I accept that Hughes writes well, I felt that it was misleading.

I shouldn't comment further on the book itself without reading it properly myself.

Anonymous said...

Very good piece from Mr Turnbull. I am afraid, for mine, that every time I read something of his, Mr Abbott is diminished in my opinion.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

A pit bull vs collie?

Anonymous said...

No, more a populist vs a patrician. But what would I know - because both those words can be loaded with whatever meaning is needed for any argument.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Glad you noted the second. After all, while Mr Turnbull is clearly a patrician, I am a self-proclaimed populist!