Robert Hughes' Strange Memoir

This would have to be one of the strangest books I’ve ever read, which might explain why I couldn’t find it on the inter library loan system.  The strangeness is highlighted by the fact that the story ends in 1970 when Hughes jets off to the US to become art critic for Time Magazine.  One would have thought that 513 pages would have been sufficient to cover his entire life, rich and varied as it was, but no.  Perhaps there was meant to be a second edition, although he completed this one six years before his death.

Robert Hughes (The Guardian)

Those who remember the Australian art critic and writer Robert Hughes (1938 - 2012) will recognize the irony in the title “Robert Hughes - Things I Didn’t Know”. He was known for his forthright, even rambunctious views on just about everything.  But the book begins with a harrowing account of his near fatal car crash in the north of Western Australia in 1999.  It seems we had a different Robert Hughes, physically and in other respects after that episode. 

He had a Catholic upbringing and was educated at a strict Jesuit boarding school. For mine, he banters on for far too long about his early life.  His distant father whom he clearly idolised was a World War One fighter pilot and later became a solicitor before dying when Robert was only 12.  Hughes was the youngest of four by far and his father’s death affected him greatly.  Although he rambles on and on about his father’s wartime experiences, Hughes does come up with some interesting anecdotes.  Such as Allied high command’s point blank refusal to issue its pilots with parachutes, for the dubious reason that such safety devices would reduce the fighting spirit of the pilots and give them an easy way out.  “This appalling callousness condemned many pilots to be roasted alive, thousands of feet in the air, as their stricken little planes spiraled helplessly to earth…”  Apparently, some pilots chose to simply bail out without parachutes - who could blame them.

Riverview St Ignatius College, Sydney

The eloquence of Hughes’ writing is evident in his summation of the futility of WW1 and the contrast to the objectives of WW2.  “Hitler had to be stopped, and  his defeat did save the human race from unimaginably worse  slaughters.  No such historical necessity excused the deaths of millions of boys in 1914-18.  Because of the killing by a Serbian terrorist of an Austrian archduke whose life wasn’t worth a jackeroo’s finger, because of the ineptitude of Europe’s civil and military leaders and the indifference of old men (including British Prime Minister Lloyd George - I believe) to the fate of the young, they were sucked into the immense vortex of the most vilely useless mass conflict in modern history…” 

Hughes found life in the Jesuit boarding school, Riverview in Sydney, repressive and beatings were common.  However he heaps great praise on Father Wallace who was the headmaster and who allowed Hughes access to books that were outside the limited curriculum of the college.  Father Wallace paved the way to Hughes becoming a fully articulate writer.

As Hughes tells the story, he attained the role of art critic almost by accident.  His predecessor at The Observer in Sydney was sacked after being critical of an exhibition which, as it turned out, he hadn’t seen.  Hughes was an illustrator for the magazine and that was good enough for the editor, the celebrated social commentator Donald Horne.  But as Hughes explained, there was very little art in Australia in the late 1950’s and early ‘60s to be critiquing.  He also briefly wrote criticism for, and contributed cartoons to The Mirror, until Rupert Murdoch took it over and slashed his wages.

Ian Fairweather on Bribie Island c 1966 (Art Gallery of New South Wales)

One of his more amusing anecdotes involved a trip with the artist Jon Molvig to visit the “sage of Bribie Island”, Ian Fairweather.  The trip was hair raising enough due to Molvig’s heavy drinking, but upon arrival they discovered Fairweather in a disheveled state, his front teeth were missing, one foot was wrapped in rags after he’d been bitten by a goanna and he was living in leaky Balinese huts.  It was obvious to Hughes and Molvig that the foot was gangrenous and they had to almost drag him to the mainland for treatment. 

So appalled was Fairweather’s Sydney dealer with the state of his paintings, she sent him a roll of the finest Belgian flax canvas which would have cost a fortune.  Fairweather used the canvas to plug holes in his hut and went on painting on damp cardboard with house paint.

Hughes never felt comfortable in the Australia of his youth.  He disliked the bush and the beach - inside a house, or even better a cafe seemed to be his natural habitat.  Eventually he realised that he had to head off overseas.   He left for Europe in 1964. 

Thanks to contacts he developed with the likes of renowned Australian author Alan Moorehead and art historian Herbert Read, Hughes began his writing career.  He is particularly indebted to Moorehead, having spent some time living with him and his wife in Italy.  He writes at great length about the impact Italian culture had on him (particularly the gardens of Bomarzo), which he was able to enjoy before these sites were “wrecked” by tourism.  But he believes that his years in central Italy, being exposed to great religious art, had transformed him from a guilt ridden, young ex-catholic who was haunted by the critical gaze of strongly catholic family into a relatively guilt free agnostic - more at ease with the world. 

So he left for London and soon found work there, contributing to the Sunday Times and later the Sunday Telegraph.  He was scathing of the youth underground of the sixties in London which he claimed was based on spontaneous  hedonism, the joy of marijuana, spontaneous and uncommitted sex, and culturally illiterate, ignorant of most things older than itself.  And it was within this milieu that Hughes met his future wife, Danne Emerson.

Danne Emerson (xwhos.com)

The marriage was a disaster.  Emerson was also an expat Australian with a Catholic upbringing. Shortly after the birth of their son Danton, Danne announced that she was going to ‘find her own fucks’ and suggested the Hughes do the same.  “If there was ever a misalliance between two emotionally hypercharged and wolfishly immature people. It was our marriage.  I was as unsuited to her as she was to me.  I could no more fulfull or even predict her needs than she could mine.” 

He blames his Catholic upbringing for lacking the courage to end the marriage, at least until 1981.  He said it was like being trapped in the hull of an upturned boat, running out of oxygen yet lacking the courage to dive deeper and escape to the surface.  He claims she contracted the clap from Jimi Hendrix before passing it on to him.  But Hughes’ own track record wasn’t spotless and this was another reason for his reluctance to file for divorce - fear that Danton might become a ward of the courts. 

He is scathing of Brett Whiteley who, he suspected, introduced Danne to harder drugs which was the final nail in the marriage coffin.  He found a drug-free Whiteley to be delightful company but “The shame of addiction…is apt to make junkies into missionaries.  They like, and need, to drag others down with them.  Such aggression compensates for their own weakness and dependency with drugs.” 

Hughes describes Whiteley as a cultural mascot for the semi-cultivated, a disciple (supposedly) of Zen Buddhism who overdosed in a lonely motel room south of Sydney.  Danton died by suicide in 2001 with Hughes once claiming that they hardly knew one another.  Danne died in 2003 from a brain tumor.

The Interior of the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence (The Guardian)

One of the most significant experiences of Hughes’ life was when he reported on the devastating Florence floods of November 1966 for BBC2.  The flood laid waste to much of the rich cultural heritage of Florence and imbued in Hughes an even greater reverence for art of the past and an antipathy for those of the avant-garde who regard the past as repressive and a dead weight that ‘new’ art had to shake off.  He acknowledges that culture does change but the idea that it can reinvent itself, like a snake shedding its skin is naïve.  He is regarded by some as a cultural conservative. 

Perhaps it was his enquiring, encyclopedic mind that prevented Hughes from reigning in his story to one volume, but it’s worth a read nevertheless.

The Salvator Mundi - Art World Insanity

I’ve heard of rampant inflation, but this is insane.  How can a painting explode in value from $1175 in 2005 to $450 million in the space of 12 years?  It’s a story of greed and power that has captivated many in the art world including critic Ben Lewis, who wrote a book on the subject called “The Last Leonardo - The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting”.  It’s basically a biography of a painting.  A feature length documentary has also been produced on the subject. 

The painting in question is ‘Salvator Mundi’, thought to have been the work of Leonardo da Vinci.  Or is it?  Concerns over the authenticity of the painting revolve around a number of areas - including the state it was in after centuries of overpainting was removed during a recent restoration.  It’s thought that such is the extent of the restoration that little of it now bears the hand of the master.

Salvator Mundi, c.1500, Oil on board, 65.6 cm x 45.4 cm

Another concern about the painting’s authenticity relates to its provenance.  In his book, Lewis writes of the limitations that investigations into the provenance of paintings produced prior to the 19th Century can have.  “The result is that provenance histories for works of art from before the 19th century are frequently assembled from a range of probabilities, which reinforce each other. Such structures can be precarious, wobbling between the likely and the hypothetical. The evidence is often circumstantial…”  He writes of the tendency to meld fact with fantasy. 

Like many artists of his day (and even some today), Leonardo had a studio where he employed assistants and it’s not clear if the Salvator Mundi is an ‘autographed Leonardo’ - that is; designed and painted by him, or a ‘Leonardo plus workshop’ where an assistant painted it, perhaps under the guidance of the master. The problem is that there is a huge price differential between the two possibilities.  And to complicate matters further, there is thought to be at least 20 copies of the painting floating around the world. 

Leonardo was a celebrity by the time the Salvator Mundi was produced, and yet there is almost no documentation from the time indicating that he painted it.  Which is unlike almost anything else he produced, no hype, no mention of it in his notebooks.  According to Lewis, the greatest Leonardo experts in the world are divided over this painting which makes it such a fascinating topic.

After the overpainting had been removed by Dianne Modestini

It’s beyond the scope of this blog to trace the history of this painting, murky as it is, but in 1908 it appears in a photograph at the Cook Collection in poor condition, heavily overpainted.  The painting remains in the collection until 1958 when the Cook family hold an auction and whilst every major art dealer in Europe is in attendance, no one buys the Salvator Mundi.  That is, until an American couple who were travelling through the UK purchase it for 45 pounds before returning to the US on a cargo ship. 

The painting remains in their household in New Orleans for nearly 50 years, during which time the couple die and a relative decides to sell their collection of paintings.  A representative of Christies visits the home and ignores the painting which is eventually sold at a “forth division auction house” in 2005 to two New Orleans art dealers, Alex Parish and Robert Simon, for $1175.  They later claimed they spent $10,000 because they wanted to give the painting more credibility. 

And here the story becomes really intriguing.  Although the painting was in poor condition, it was the depiction of Christ’s hand that convinced them that it was worth restoring.  So they took the painting to one of America’s foremost restorers Dianne Modestini to weave her magic.  After removing all the overpainting the picture appeared as above.  A large crack that leads down to a knot appears in the painting and this is another argument used by those who question the painting’s authenticity.  Although Leonardo painted on board, he was thought to be a perfectionist and would never paint on a board containing a knot, due to the possibility that it would make the board unstable.  But during the restoration process, which took roughly six years, Modestini formed the view that it was a genuine Leonardo. 

As Lewis points out, the problem with restorations is that there are no guidelines or limits on how far a restorer can go to repair a work of art.  Therefore auction houses such as Christies are not required to warrant the condition of an artwork, or its restoration.  All they have to do is warrant that the painting is by, say, Leonardo. 

The Salvator Mundi first came to the public’s attention in 2011 when it was included in a major Leonardo exhibition held at the National Gallery in London, having been touted as a genuine Leonardo.  Afterwards, Simon and Parish decide it’s time to sell. 

Enter the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier.  For a decade, Bouvier had acted as an agent for the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, selling him $2 billion dollars worth of art.  What Rybolovlev didn’t realise was that these purchases included a $1 billion dollar markup.  Bouvier’s negotiations with Sothebys for the purchase of Salvator Mundi on behalf of Rybolovlev in 2013 was a sham.  He purchased the painting for himself for $83 million and sold it the next day to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.  He claims to have warned Rybolovlev not to buy the painting as he didn’t consider it a sound investment, but Rybolovlev insisted he wanted the painting.

Bouvier developed the concept of the ‘freeport’, which are armoured warehouses located usually within the perimeter of an airport or shipping terminal where people can store valuable items free from import duties.  These items can be bought and sold through the freeport system without any taxes being paid because the items are considered to be in transit.  It’s thought that billions of dollars of art are stored in these freeports as financial assets only.   

In 2014 Rybolovlev saw an article in the New York Times which stated the true price that was paid for the Salvator Mundi.  Feeling that he’d been taken advantage by Bouvier, Rybolovlev directs Bouvier to sell all his paintings by Christmas 2014, or face the consequences.  This directive was given on 22nd November.  As a result of the actions taken against him, Bouvier claims to have lost everything. 

And this brings us to the auction of Rybolovlev’s collection (which include works by Gauguin, Rothko, Magritte, Picasso) at Christies in 2017 and that record $450 million dollar sale of the Salvator Mundi, considered to be the black sheep in the collection.  Christies embarked on an outrageous advertising campaign to generate the necessary hype surrounding the painting.  They promoted it as the male Mona Lisa and produced a video which contains very little footage of the painting.  Instead we see people seemingly gobsmacked whilst looking at it - the cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio.  

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman & his yacht. (The Times)

These art auctions are pure theatre, and once the bidding on the Salvator Mundi reached $180 million, it had exceeded the previous record price for an artwork, anywhere.  The buyer turned out to be the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  And now, the whereabouts of the painting is unknown.  It was a no-show at a major exhibition of Leonardo’s work that was held at the Louvre to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death in 1519.  There was to have been an official unveiling of the painting in Abu Dhabi in 2018, but it was canceled 2 weeks prior.   It’s thought that the painting is stored on the Prince’s private super yacht. 

According to one critic, after drugs and prostitution, the art market is the most unregulated market in the world; a totally opaque world in which no one knows the true value of a work, who’s buying it and who’s selling it. 

References;

‘The Last Leonardo - With Ben Lewis’,  the Art Law Podcast, 2019

‘The Lost Leonardo’, 2021 documentary directed by Andreas Koefoed

David Sylvester - The Unique Art Critic

It’s been argued that there is a shortage of good art writers in this world today.  It’s not clear why this is the case – one suggestion being the proliferation of rubbish that masquerades as contemporary art.  Thus the traditional hierarchies of quality upon which art is judged have broken down, and no one is sure exactly what constitutes “good” art these days.  But in the not so distant past, there were some notable art writers/historians.  Robert Rosenblum comes to mind, another is David Sylvester.

Sylvester (1924 – 2001) was a complex personality whose involvement in art was multifaceted, embracing writing, curating, collecting and advising.  He’s been described as the golden lion of English art writing and one of the finest writers on art in the second half of the 20th century.

Giacometti's portrait of Sylvester from 1960

Sylvester made a point of really getting to know the artist whom he was critiquing, as well as their art. He was noted for his clarity of expression and he championed the art of Picasso, Matisse, Magritte, Giacometti, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon.  He was also skilled at making exhibitions, his first featuring the work of Moore.

During the 1950’s and 1960’s he wrote about football and cricket for the Observer, ran a cricket team called the Eclectics and reviewed films.  He was an avid collector of art from all around the world and his collection was constantly evolving. 

Sylvester allowed his attitudes to certain artists to evolve over time.  For many years he was hostile to the work of Picasso, but 40 years later he felt nearer to "accepting [Picasso's] genius, rather than resenting it".  His views on Matisse and Picasso are enlightening to say the least; "It is not even the question of Picasso versus Matisse," he wrote, "for even at those times when Matisse seems the greater, Picasso himself is still the question, probably because Matisse is a great artist in the same sort of way as many great artists of the past, whereas Picasso is a kind of artist who could not have existed before this century, since his art is a celebration of this century's introduction of a totally promiscuous eclecticism into the practice of art.”

Sylvester lacked any formal training in art but did practise painting for a while, before deciding in his late teens that he might be better at writing about art than making it. 

Sylvester with Francis Bacon

Of all the artists within his field of expertise, Francis Bacon was the one that Sylvester was most closely associated with as both champion and major critic.  Apparently, Bacon fell into the category of “artists for whom personal authenticity and a struggle to come to terms with reality were of utmost concern” to Sylvester.

Looking at Sylvester’s interview with Bacon from 1966, I’m struck by the easy, yet thoughtful conversational style he adopted.  There is also a psychologically penetrating aspect to his questioning, in particular in relation to Bacon’s portraits.  Sylvester asks Bacon to comment on the perception that much of his work is horrific.  Bacon responds that it’s been his objective to paint an image as directly and ‘rawly’ as possible and this directness may be interpreted as horrific.

Bacon’s portrait of former lover George Dyer

He asks Bacon if he has ever had a model sitting for him who he has painted many times from memory and if so, what has happened.  Bacon answers yes, and that the experience inhibits him (if he likes them) due to his propensity to carry out some injury to them on the canvas.  He’d rather do it in private than to do it before them.  Sylvester asks Bacon why he considers his distortions injuries and the response is that this is the way the viewing public interprets them.  “Don’t you think those interpretations are right?” asks Sylvester.  “Possibly” is the response. 

Sylvester asks Bacon if his mark marking is both a caress and a blow, an assault on the model, that is; his mark making represents contradictory feelings for the model.  Bacon quotes Oscar Wilde – “you kill the thing you love.”  He also states that many of his subjects are troubled souls.

It’s fascinating watching Sylvester roaming around Bacon’s shambolic studio, discussing his source material.  He expresses amazement when Bacon tells him he never visited Velazquez’ portrait of Pope Innocent X in Rome despite spending 2 months there.  Bacon responds by saying he didn’t want to see the original after what he had done to it.

Bacon, Study After Velazquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953

“I want to produce a very ordered image, but I want it to come about by chance”.  Sylvester argues that this is a matter of reconciling opposites.  “One wants to be as factual as possible and yet at the same time as deeply suggestive, or deeply unlocking of areas of sensation other than the simple illustration of the object that you set out to do – isn’t that what all art is about?” asks Bacon.

In discussing Rembrandt’s 1659 self-portrait, Bacon makes reference to the ‘brutal’ image making of American abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock which he believes had all been done before by Rembrandt, such as his self-portrait which is anti-illustrational.  However, Rembrandt’s work had “the additional aspect of recording a fact – that is, his appearance which makes Rembrandt’s work much more profound and exciting because it is much more difficult.”

Rembrandt self portrait, 1659

It really is a wonderful interview and only a critic who knew his subject as profoundly as Sylvester knew Bacon could have pulled it off.  It inspired actor Jeremy Irons to publish a video in which he brings to life excerpts of the interview.  You’ll find the video on Iron’s website.

References;

The Guardian

Artcritical.com

Francis Bacon – Fragments of a Portrait, interview with David Sylvester

Death By A Thousand Brushes

If the creators of Midsomer Murders ever run out of ideas (and after 20 seasons they surely have), they could do a lot worse than attend an arts fair.  DCI Barnaby would have been kept very busy at the Affordable Arts Fair in Melbourne where the death rate, in artistic terms, was phenomenal.  I saw illustration, décor and crass commercialism but very little art.  Have a good look at the logo…..is it any wonder the artist has hidden her face?

One of the more appalling stands was the online gallery, Bluethumb.  It had me realizing that I’m mixing with the wrong crowd.  Yes, I have sold 2 paintings on that site, but none recently and clearly I am out of step with their main focus – colour, surface, texture.  Interestingly, the Bluethumb people gave me a wide berth whilst I was there – was it the expression on my face?  Or did they recognise me from a few months ago when they sent me false sale notifications on 2 consecutive days and I spread the word far and wide?

There were some gems in the ocean of detritus, if you were prepared to look hard enough, and I have included images of them below.  There may have been others but after an hour or so I’d had enough.  So it was off to the Hophaus Restaurant in Southbank to detox.

Shannon Smiley, Near The Harbour Bridge, oil on canvas

Katsutoshi Yuasa, Tread Softly Because You Tread On My Dreams, Oil-based Woodcut

Wayne Fogden, Le Venaria Reale, Inkjet Print

Luis Fuentes, Home, Oil On Canvas

The Hard Hitting But Entertaining Critic

If you are looking for an art critic who can make art understandable and accessible, then English born Waldemar Januszczak could be your man.  He has an easy, conversational style of presentation that I have always enjoyed.  Often humorous and witty, he is credited with doing for the arts what David Attenborough has done for the natural world.

He began his career as an art critic with the Guardian in the 1980’s before switching to the Sunday Times in 1992.  In 1997 he founded a company called ZCZ Films which has produced over 30 films covering travel, the arts and even dogs.  In his program Puppy Love from 2000, Januszczak takes a swipe at dogs and particularly their owners who he can’t stand.  From the snippet I’ve seen on Youtube, it looks hilarious.

His 2009 series “Baroque! From St Peters to St Pauls” reinvigorated my passion for the arts after a disastrous return to the workforce.  It was dark and brooding in segments, but highly entertaining and informative.  His self-deprecation is something I appreciate yet at the same time his profound knowledge of and passion for art history is clear.

But he has an acerbic tongue, or should that be pen?  His hatred of the Turner Prize is legendary dating all the way back to 1984.  “The British art establishment, having already shown unforgivable ignorance and wickedness in its dealings with Turner's own Bequest to the nation, is now bandying his name about in the hope of giving some spurious historical credibility to a new prize cynically concocted to promote the interest of a small group of dealers, gallery directors and critics.”

One year on and things hadn’t improved, ‘The Turner Prize, like the rot of the Arts Council, the rise of business sponsorship with strings attached, the growing importance of the PR man in art, the mess at the V&A, and the emergence of the ignorant "art consultant" is the direct result of inadequate government support for the arts. Forced out into the business circus, art has had to start clowning around.’  Both quotes are from The Guardian.  Of the 2014 prize Januszczak described it as “yawn-forcingly, heart-crushingly, buttock-clenchingly bad” and urged people not to go.

Unfortunately, Januszczak’s invective has also been directed towards Australian art, in particular the exhibition “Australia” mounted at the Royal Academy in 2013.  The Times seemed impressed with it, describing the exhibition as long overdue.  But over at the Sunday Times, Januszczak disagreed and described it as light weight, provincial and dull.  Yet in his most recent TV series “Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art – Made In The USA” he seemed to be championing exactly that kind of art – at least in the snippet I uncovered on the Net.

John Olsen Sydney Sun

Januszczak describes McCubbin’s famous Pioneers triptych as “poverty porn” (work that one out), Fred Williams desert landscape as “thick cowpats of minimalism”, and most indigenous art as “tourist tat”.  He reserved his most fierce attack for John Olsen’s Sydney Sun describing as “a cascade of diarrhoea”.   Olsen responded by describing the comments as foolish and an attempt to put the colonials in their place.

Januszczak’s website ZCZ Films includes a shop that, strangely, contains very few of his most recent programs.  The ABC informed me they were frozen out of negotiations to screen his 2016 series The Renaissance Unchained by the BBC agreeing to an exclusive rights deal with Foxtel Arts. One assumes this also applies to his other recent films.  The Renaissance Unchained is still not available on the website.  This tends to make one feel very lonely in OZ, unless one can afford pay-tv.