ability to summarise 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 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 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 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." Artist Jakob Zaaiman has criticised Hughes's grasp of contemporary art, arguing that he was unable to see beyond a narrow and blinkered classical aestheticism, and so failed to appreciate its theatrical and narrative possibilities. This was said to be particularly evident in his views of Andy Warhol. Honours Bibliography Books (Condensed version of Barcelona) Critical studies and reviews Biographies Anderson, Patricia (2009). Robert Hughes: The Australian Years, Sydney: Pandora Press; Britain, Ian (1997). Once An Australian: Journeys with Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes, Oxford University Press; Notes External links Robert Hughes at Random House Australia Valerie Lawson, Sydney Morning Herald, "After legal jousting and vitriol, Hughes fined in absentia for car crash" (2003) Eric Ellis, The Bulletin, July 2002, "Shock of the Broome" 1987 audio interview of Robert Hughes