Hughes, Robert

Hughes, Robert ( 1938 –   ),
Australian art critic and historian, born in Sydney. He has written extensively and influentially on Australian, European, and American art: his publications include Heaven and Hell in Western Art ( 1969 ), The Shock of the New ( 1980 ), and Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America ( 1993 ). He is perhaps most widely known for his substantial, gripping, controversial, and scholarly history of the founding of Australia, The Fatal Shore ( 1987 ).