The Shock of the New - Robert Hughes

...as far as covering all the main movements/schools of the 20th century.

I thought it would be interesting to review this book because though it was written over 25 years ago to accompany the television series, Robert Hughes recently came back to present a new programme of the tv show to examine more recent work to examine whether the things that made art in the 20th century shocking are still relevant today. I would suggest that this ...
...less shockable over the last 25 years than was the case then or even over the last century.

In a film which featured interviews with David Hockney, Paula Rego, Jeff Koons and Sean Scully, Robert Hughes made the case that painting, drawing, and the search for beauty matter more than ever before.

I read this book recently after having first read it 25 years ago when the show first came out. The original series was repeated ... more

This has become a seminal book for all art students and is as comprehensive an introduction to modernism in Art you are likely to get as far as covering all the main movements/schools of the 20th century.

I thought it would be interesting to review this book because though it was written over 25 years ago to accompany the television series, Robert Hughes recently came back to present a new programme of the tv show to examine more recent work to examine whether the things that made art in the 20th century shocking are still relevant today. I would suggest that this was not so, as we have become a great deal less shockable over the last 25 years than was the case then or even over the last century.

In a film which featured interviews with David Hockney, Paula Rego, Jeff Koons and Sean Scully, Robert Hughes made the case that painting, drawing, and the search for beauty matter more than ever before.

I read this book recently after having first read it 25 years ago when the show first came out. The original series was repeated on bbc4, Thursday 8th July, Thursday29th July, in a series of double bills, it rekindled my interest in the series. Unless you recorded it then you may have trouble getting the TV show on video, though it is available from the U.S if you know someone over there (Ambrose publishing)

Born in Sydney in 1938, Hughes graduated from that city's St. Ignatius College and went on to Sydney University, where he studied the arts and architecture. He abandoned his course of study at 21 when he was commissioned to write a history of Australian painting. Later, he moved to Europe and began his journalistic career as a freelance writer, specializing in art criticism. Before joining TIME as the newsmagazine's art critic in 1970, Hughes was a contributor to a number of English publications, including The Observer, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and Encounter. In Australia, he was art critic for two Sydney publications, The Nation and The Sunday Mirror. I think his background explains his journalistic approach to the subject, rather than an acedemic one.

The style of the programme was challenging and new in itself and was a reaction to the Kenneth Clark style of rather dry reverence for great art, with jump cuts, and Hughes' pieces to camera which were entertaining and quirky. However when you see the words written down you lose some of the dynamics of the TV show and the performance and you are left with a very dry and very, very wordy text which could require a great deal of cerebral effort on the reader, and a great deal of patience.

It is one thing to see Hughes perform for the camera, and another to read his eulogy on paper. It can seem a very heady text if you are not used to the language, and could I think be a frustrating read to some one not familiar with the terms being used. There is a considerable amount of technical language, and a vocabulary, which is particular to the description of the academic western canon of art. I think if you were new to art History it would be better to see the TV series first, and then go through the book after having have it all read out to you first, with the images of the series still fresh in your mind.

The relationship of major artists to the world from which they came and which they sought to change has been complex and stormy. Robert Hughes explains and illuminates this relationship in eight themes.

The Chapters of the book are based on the episodes.

The Mechanical Paradise - Episode 1

An exploration of the interaction between the art of the 20th century and significant events of recent world history, beginning with turn-of-the-century Europe when the term "modernism" first came into use. Here he shows how artistic movements such as cubism and futurism mirrored a rapidly changing, technologically - oriented world.

The Powers that Be - Episode 2

The interplay between art and politics, how artists were affected by the development of mechanised warfare and ideologies like fascism and communism.
Hughes examines the relationship between art and politics as exemplified by Dadaism, expressionism and constructivism, movements seen as reactions to World War I's mechanized warfare; and Guernica, Pablo Picasso's anguished response to the 1937 bombing of that Basque village.
"
The Landscape of Pleasure - Episode 3

The French artists who attempted to reconcile man with nature, from the determination of the impressionists to paint outside to Matisse's vibrant use of colour, from the impressionist paintings of Monet and the structured coherence of Cezanne's still lifes and landscapes, to the rapturous use of color in the works of Derain

Trouble in Utopia-Episode4

Hughes explores how modern architects in the wake of the Bauhaus aspired to change societies with their designs, a move represented both by Le Corbusier and the plans for the city Brasilia.In this overview of modern architecture from the Bauhaus to the Buckminster Fuller dome, Robert Hughes comments on the rise and spread of the international style, and the myth of the architect as social legislator, epitomized by the work of le Corbusier and the planned city of Brasilia.

The Threshold of Liberty - Episode 5

The art movement that gripped its exponents with the fervour of a religion: surrealism. Artists like Di Chirico, Ernst, Miró and Dalí; brought the subconscious to the fore and attempted to tap into innocent and irrationality.Robert Hughes explores surrealism, as an intuitive expression in the paintings of Henri Rousseau and the palais ideal of Ferdinand Cheval, and as the last revolutionary art movement of the 20th century, exemplified by the work of di Chirico, Ernst, Miro, Dali and Magritte.

The View From the Edge - Episode 6

Expressionism sprung out of the harsh, secular atmosphere of the 20th Century and evolved, through the strong colours and often sombre moods of artists like Munch, to the non-figurative work of Pollock and De Kooning.The evolution of expressionism in modern art is traced by Robert Hughes, from the work of van Gogh and Munch, to the non-figurative paintings of Pollack and Rothko, viewed as a reaction to the realities so graphically captured by photography in World War II, and the increasing secularization of 20th century life.

Culture as Nature - Episode 7

Artists began to take man-made images as their inspiration, leading to the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein as well as Stuart Davis' collages inspired by jazz.Robert Hughes examines the influences of mass media and mass culture on art as seen in the jazz-inspired collages of Stuart Davis, the found-object creations of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

The Future That Was - Episode 8

The final episode in the series explores the decline of modernism and how various artists have reacted to the consequent commercialisation of their art.
In the series conclusion, Robert Hughes considers the decline and fragmentation of modernism, the institutionalization of art; art as a marketable commodity, opposed by the mute, unsalable presence of conceptual art, earthworks and body art; and the death of the idea of the art movement as such.

Unfortunately as with most seminal works the ideas contained therein often become confused with the "truth", instead of the views of the author, which indeed this book is.There is no "truth" in this book just the personal feelings of the recognised Aussie academic Robert Hughes. His opinions and procrastinations are based on facts not truths, and this must be remembered when ploughing through this illustrious tome.

When I first read it I was still at school, and not having studied art very much at home I took everything in this book to be the indisputable truth, and never questioned it until much later when I studied art at college, Backed up by the TV series, it was powerful stuff at the time but I later began to question the ideas put forward.

The book is not a chronological history of modernism starting at the turn of the 20th The subjects are taken by order of theme, which helps to associate different responses to the same subject matter through the century. The book aims to show the succession of art movements in Europe and America and Russia, in an academic analysis, but does not touch on art in Asia , the East or Africa, so it can not be seen as a history of world art in the 20th Century just an elitist part of it, covered by Western thought.

The only time we hear of non-western parts of the world is when our illustrious western artists go to visit the "primitive " world for inspiration., Gauguin, in Tahiti for example. So what we have is a chap from the other side of equator come over to our side to tell us a history of modern art from our side without reference to his own culture and history, in a purely academic sense as if it was the definitive meaning of world art in the 20th century, when in fact it isn't, it's just the cutting edge stuff from the "First" world, industrialised world, which is not a full picture, but that's ok if you realise that's what it is.

The "Shock" of the new is something, which seems to pre occupy the artists of the west in the 20th century, producing more reactionary and "challenging" art movement than at any other time. Unfortunately these shocking images only remain shocking for a short time before they inevitably become sucked into the mainstream.

The Impressionists for example in their own time where never truly accepted until most of them were dead. The use of art to challenge society is well documented in the book, and the way art was used as a major weapon for subversives such as the surrealists and the dadaists, as a way of challenging intellectual thought and ideas, in a way that it had never been used before. This is well brought out in the book, and the contrast with the previous centuries art, which had a lot more to do with ephemeral and romantic notions, and art as status symbol.

When you are discussing such issues around the paintings and artworks, you can to some extent take into account, the artists own writings on the subject and use that as a basis for your own conjecture, however this is all it can be after a certain point. The views expressed in this book I would say are not as timeless as the some of the works in question.

The book was first published in the 1980's to coincide with a television series of the same name, and it is primarily a written accompaniment to the series. I would say that many of the ideas expressed in the book are a little dated, and even a little trite as we can now see the works in perspective in a much more global perspective as the world has opened up a lot more even in the last 20 years, what with global communication and the internet. I find it a rather elitist and insular book, which is somewhat paradoxically aimed at people who want the history of art in the 20th century explained to them in a nutshell, a sort of tourist guide to Modernism. I believe that many copies of this book remain still unopened on various coffee tables throughout the land, purely because it is regarded as a seminal book, regardless of it's content.

There is a great deal of discussion of the artist as visionary in the 20th century, a kind of untouchable genius driven by divine inspiration. This I think comes across well in the book, however the works tend to be discussed in terms of their relation to and effect on society as well, which is probably very little I actual fact outside of their elitist circles of artistic theory and thought.

The modernist of the 20th century tend to be more concerned with intellectual and conceptual ideas, than beauty which is fortunate as it allows Hughes to pontificate for what seems like an interminable age about the juxtaposition of artists and works, and romanticise about the greater good, and social revolution caused of the art and artists of the past century, which as I said is probably, actually negligible.

It's a bit of a book that appeals to those who think that you can change the world with art, and that it has been by these 20th century icons, but the truth is it probably wasn't. The modernists of the last century were probably more reflective than they would care to think, and did a great deal of depicting society rather than changing it, If you believe the opposite then this book will definitely give you a good comfort zone of sanctimonious indulgence.

I think Adolf Hitlers Panzers rolling across Europe did more to change the face of the century than his countryman's Piss "fountain" (Marcel Duchamp) but there are many romantic intellectuals who would tell you otherwise, Hughes amongst them.

First edition1980 -White cover
Thames and Hudson ltd
Location-unknown

Third Edition
 Paperback 448 pages (September 2, 1991) Black Cover
 Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
 ISBN: 0500275823

"The Future that Was," the final chapter, is completely rewritten and updated. 75% of the 275 illustrations in the revised edition are in 4-color

List Price £19.95
Available on Amazon £13.99

 

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