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39-440: The centerpiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces. At the center of the planned city was a transportation hub which housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at

78-654: A "Sculptor of Stark Memorials" by the New York Times, Baskin is also known for his wood, limestone, bronze, and large-scale woodblock prints, which ranged from naturalistic to fanciful, and were frequently grotesque, featuring bloated figures or humans merging with animals. "His monumental bronze sculpture, The Funeral Cortege , graces the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C." A committed figurative artist, and

117-758: A 30-foot bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, also erected in 1994, for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan . Baskin founded the Gehenna Press in 1942, one of the first fine art presses in the US, as a student at Yale , inspired by the illustrated books of William Blake which so impressed him he decided to learn to print and make his own books. The name

156-586: A collection of over 800 of his works. Baskin was the recipient of six honorary doctorates, and a member of various national and royal academies in Belgium, Italy, and U.S. The National Foundation of Jewish Culture in the U.S. presented him with its Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Visual Arts in 2000. Other honors and commendations include the: Baskin was born in New Brunswick, NJ. When Baskin

195-510: A disarming way of being provocative." Hughes's TV series American Visions (1997) reviewed the history of American art since the Revolution . Hughes's documentary on Francisco Goya , Goya: Crazy Like a Genius (2002), was broadcast on the first night of the new British domestic digital service , BBC Four . He created a one-hour update to The Shock of the New , titled The New Shock of

234-556: A drawing by Leonard Baskin . Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London in 1965, where he wrote for The Spectator , The Daily Telegraph , The Times , and The Observer , among others, and contributed to the London version of Oz . In 1970 he was appointed art critic for TIME magazine and moved to New York, where he soon became an influential voice. In 1966 Hughes published

273-575: A history of Australian painting titled The Art of Australia , still considered an important work. Hughes wrote and narrated the BBC eight-part series The Shock of the New (1980) on the development of modern art since the Impressionists . It was produced and in part directed by Lorna Pegram . It was accompanied by a book with the same title. John O'Connor of The New York Times said, "Agree or disagree, you will not be bored. Mr. Hughes has

312-531: A petty way to spend your life. Hughes could be savage, but he was never petty. There was purpose to his lightning bolts of condemnation". Hughes and Harold Hayes were recruited in 1978 to anchor the new ABC News (US) newsmagazine 20/20 . Their only broadcast, on 6 June 1978, proved so controversial that, less than a week later, ABC News president Roone Arledge terminated the contracts of both men, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs . Hughes's book The Fatal Shore followed in 1987. A study of

351-528: A study of the British convict system in early Australian history . Known for his contentious critiques of art and artists, Hughes was generally conservative in his tastes, although he did not belong to a particular philosophical camp. His writing was noted for its power and elegance. Hughes was born in Sydney, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes ,

390-435: Is yet a glory. Glorious in defining our universal sodality and in defining our utter uniqueness. The human figure is the image of all men and of one man. It contains all and can express all. As a young man, at the height of the flowering Boston Expressionist movement centered around the city's Boris Mirski Gallery , Baskin had his first major solo exhibition there in 1956, on the heels of being one of 11 artists featured in

429-646: The Academie de la Grande Chaumiere , and the following year to Florence to work at the Accademia di Belle Arti ." Between 1952 and 1953, he was an instructor in printmaking at the Worcester Art Museum where he taught the artists Joyce Reopel and Mel Zabarsky . In 1953, he began a twenty-year career teaching printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He

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468-899: The British Museum , Brooklyn Museum , Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Detroit Institute of Arts , Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , the Honolulu Museum of Art , Indianapolis Museum of Art , the Jewish Museum , the Library of Congress , Metropolitan Museum of Art , MOMA , Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , Muscarelle Museum of Art , the National Gallery of Art , the New Jersey State Museum , The Newark Museum of Art , Princeton University , Seattle Art Museum , Smithsonian American Art Museum ,

507-824: The Educational Alliance in New York City. Baskin studied at the New York University School of Architecture and Applied Arts from 1939 to 1941. In 1941, he won a scholarship to Yale where he studied for two years, and founded the Gehenna Press. Baskin served in the US Navy during the final years of World War II, and then in the Merchant Navy. He then studied at The New School for Social Research , where he obtained his B.A. in 1949. "In 1950 he went to Paris where he studied at

546-869: The Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art , Victoria and Albert Museum , the Vatican Museums , Wesleyan University , Whitney Museum of American Art , and the Worcester Art Museum . The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. "A catalogue raisonné of Baskin's graphic works includes 739 works," and the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works, most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has

585-626: The counterculture of the 1960s , exploring drug use and sexual freedom. They divorced in 1981; she died of a brain tumour in 2003. Their son, Danton, Hughes's only child, was named after the French revolutionary Georges Danton . Danton Hughes, a sculptor, committed suicide in April 2001; he was found by his partner, fashion designer Jenny Kee , with whom he had been in a long-term relationship. Robert Hughes later wrote: "I miss Danton and always will, although we had been miserably estranged for years and

624-410: The 20th century". Hughes, according to Adam Gopnik , was drawn to work that was rough-hewn, "craft attempted with passion." Hughes's critical prose, vivid in both praise and indignation, has been compared to that of George Bernard Shaw , Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare . "His prose", according to a colleague, "was lithe, muscular and fast as a bunch of fives. He was incapable of writing

663-697: The British penal colonies and early European settlement of Australia , it became an international best-seller. During the late 1990s, Hughes was a prominent supporter of the Australian Republican Movement . Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore (2000) was a series musing on modern Australia and Hughes's relationship with it. During production, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal road accident. Hughes met his first wife, Danne Emerson, in London in 1967. Together they became involved in

702-485: The Gehenna Press included James Baldwin , Anthony Hecht , Ruth Fainlight , and Anne Halley . Sylvia Plath dedicated "Sculptor" to Leonard Baskin in her work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). "In 1992, a 50-year retrospective of Gehenna Press books toured the country, including a major exhibition at the Library of Congress ." Having vowed to become a sculptor at the age of 15, Baskin studied sculpting as an apprentice to Maurice Glickman from 1937 to 1939 at

741-514: The New : "...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have aeroplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect." Robert Hughes (critic) Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO (28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012)

780-438: The New proved to be a popular and critical success: it has been assessed "much the best synoptic introduction to modern art ever written", taking as its premise the vitality gained by modern art when it ceded the need to replicate nature in favour of a more direct expression of human experience and emotion. Hughes's explanations of modern art benefited from the coherence of his judgments, and were marked by his ability to summarise

819-483: The New , which first aired in 2004. He published the first volume of his memoirs, Things I Didn’t Know , in 2006. Following his death, Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian that Hughes "was simply the greatest art critic of our time and it will be a long while before we see his like again. He made criticism look like literature. He also made it look morally worthwhile. He lent a nobility to what can often seem

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858-495: The Sydney periodical The Observer , edited by Donald Horne . Hughes was briefly involved in the original Sydney version of Oz magazine and wrote art criticism for Nation and the Sunday Mirror . In 1961, while still a student, Hughes was caught up in controversy when a number of his classmates demonstrated in a student newspaper article that he had published plagiarised poetry by Terence Tiller and others, and

897-523: The essential qualities of his subject. Whether positive or negative, his judgments were enthusiastic. He championed London painters like Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud , helping to popularise the latter in the United States, and wrote with unabashed admiration for Francisco Goya and Pierre Bonnard . By contrast Hughes was dismissive of much postmodernism and neo-expressionism , of painters like Julian Schnabel and David Salle , as well as

936-559: The jargon of the art world, and consequently was treated by its mandarins with fear and loathing." In different moods he could write that " Schnabel’s work is to painting what Stallone’s is to acting: a lurching display of oily pectorals," as well as conclude that Antoine Watteau "was a connoisseur of the unplucked string, the immobility before the dance, the moment that falls between departure and nostalgia." Leonard Baskin Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000)

975-527: The opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery . He would go on to participate in another 40 exhibitions. Within a decade, he was featured in the 1966 documentary "Images of Leonard Baskin" by American filmmaker Warren Forma . In 1972, Baskin won a Caldecott honor for his illustrations of Hosie’s Alphabet , written by his wife, Lisa, and sons Tobias and Hosea, and published by Viking Press. In 1994, he received one of his most important commissions for

1014-420: The pain of his loss has been somewhat blunted by the passage of time". Hughes was married to his second wife, Victoria Whistler, from 1981 until their divorce in 1996. In 1999, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal car accident south of Broome, Western Australia . He was returning from a fishing trip and driving on the wrong side of the road when he collided head on with another car carrying three occupants. He

1053-692: The son and brother of rabbis, Baskin's work often focused on mortality, Judaism, the Holocaust and other angst-ridden themes. Repeating a Baskin quote first published in Time magazine, the New York Times ' Roberta Smith cites it to explain Baskin's allegiance to figurative work and respect for tradition, which was at odds with the abstract expressionist movement that dominated modern art for many decades of his life, and which he firmly rejected: Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash

1092-418: The top, an airport. Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers. Robert Hughes spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series The Shock of

1131-443: The vicissitudes of a money-fuelled art market. While his reviews expressed antipathy for the avant-garde , he was beholden neither to any theory nor ideology, and managed to provoke both ends of the political spectrum. He distrusted novelty in art for its own sake, yet he was also disdainful of a conservative aesthetic that avoided risk. He famously labelled contemporary Australian indigenous art as "the last great art movement of

1170-610: Was a pilot in the First World War , with later careers as a solicitor and company director. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12. His mother was Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal. His elder brother was Australian politician Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes , the father of former Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull , the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull . He had another brother Geoffrey and one sister, Constance. Growing up in Rose Bay, Sydney , Hughes

1209-882: Was also a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists . After spending several years in the 1970s in England, Baskin returned to the U.S. in 1984, and subsequently taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Baskin's work is held by major museums worldwide, including the American Numismatic Society , the Amon Carter Museum , the Art Institute of Chicago , the Art Museum of Southeast Texas , Boca Raton Museum of Art ,

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1248-459: Was also survived by two stepsons from his wife's previous marriage, Freeborn Garrettson Jewett IV and Fielder Douglas Jewett; his brothers, Tom and Geoffrey Hughes; a sister, Constance Crisp; and many nieces and nephews. When The Shock of the New was proposed to the BBC, television programmers were sceptical that a journalist could properly follow the aristocratic tone of Kenneth Clark , whose Civilisation had been so successful. The Shock of

1287-521: Was an American sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as well as founder of the Gehenna Press (1942–2000). One of America's first fine arts presses, it went on to become "one of the most important and comprehensive art presses of the world", often featuring the work of poets, such as Sylvia Plath , Ted Hughes , Anthony Hecht , and James Baldwin side by side with Baskin's bold, stark, energetic and often dramatic black-and-white prints. Called

1326-457: Was an Australian-born art critic , writer, and producer of television documentaries . He was described in 1997 by Robert Boynton of The New York Times as "the most famous art critic in the world." Hughes earned widespread recognition for his book and television series on modern art , The Shock of the New , and for his longstanding position as art critic with TIME magazine. He is also known for his best seller The Fatal Shore (1986),

1365-540: Was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview before studying arts and then architecture at the University of Sydney . At university, he associated with the Sydney "Push" – a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Among the group were Germaine Greer and Clive James . Hughes, an aspiring artist and poet, abandoned his university endeavours to become first a cartoonist and then an art critic for

1404-662: Was fined A$ 2,500. Hughes recounts the story of the accident and his recovery in the first chapter of his 2006 memoir Things I Didn't Know . In 2001, Hughes wed his third wife, the American artist and art director Doris Downes . "Apart from being a talented painter, she saved my life, my emotional stability, such as it is", he said. After a long illness, reportedly exacerbated by some 50 years of alcohol consumption, Hughes died at Calvary Hospital in The Bronx , New York City, on 6 August 2012, with his wife at his bedside. He

1443-568: Was seven, the family relocated to the Jewish Orthodox section of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. Baskin was first cousin to American modern dancer and choreographer Sophie Maslow . His first wife Esther Baskin, a nature writer , the author of Creatures of Darkness and The Poppy and Other Deadly Plants , and mother to son Tobias, died in 1973 at age 47. Baskin died at age 77 on June 3, 2000, in Northampton, where he resided. He

1482-598: Was taken from a line in Paradise Lost : "and black Gehenna call'd, the type of hell". The Gehenna Press printed over 100 books and ran until Baskin's death in 2000. In 1974, Baskin moved with his family to Britain, to Lurley Manor , near Tiverton, Devon , to be close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he had illustrated the poetry volume Crow published in 1970. Baskin and Hughes collaborated on several further works, including A Primer of Birds , published by Gehenna Press in 1981. Other poets who collaborated with

1521-405: Was trapped in the car for three hours before being airlifted to Perth in critical condition. Hughes was in a coma for five weeks after the crash. In a 2000 court hearing, Hughes's defence barrister alleged that the occupants of the other car had been transporting illicit drugs at the time of the accident and were at fault. In 2003 Hughes pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm and

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