About the Author

Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938. From 1970 onwards, he lived in the United States, where he was Time magazine's art critic for more than twenty-five years. His books include monographs on painters Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach; a history of Australian Art; Heaven and Hell in Western Art; The Fatal Shore; a collection of reviews, Nothing If Not Critical; Barcelona; The Culture of Complaint; and American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, published in conjunction with an eight-part television series on the same subject. Hughes died in August 2012.