The Asteroid Project

Farewell Robert Hughes

I was always a big fan of Robert Hughes, the Australian critic who passed away yesterday in New York. He certainly opened my eyes to visual art, through books and TV documentaries such as The Shock of the New and American Visions. I enjoyed the first volume of his memoirs, Things I Didn’t Know. Will we ever read volume two?

His evocative history of Australia’s convict transportation era, The Fatal Shore, grabbed me and didn’t let go. I always described Hughes’ prose as muscular; his voice could be heard booming from the page, forthright and confident.

I read The Fatal Shore in 2000, while I was employed travelling around Australia, checking out Blockbuster Video stores. I happened to be following the book around, staying in New South Wales while reading about the First Fleet, and immersing myself in Hughes’ account of convict-era Port Arthur while visiting Tasmania. The experience combined, and I could smell and see what Hughes was talking about.

In 1999, Robert Hughes had a near-fatal car accident near Broome in Western Australia. I was in Perth in 2000 while he was in court in Broome, defending his driving charges. He was all over the papers, and his book was in my head. And so I wrote this poem:

ROBERT HUGHES IS EVERYWHERE

Robert Hughes is everywhere,

In the book I read

In the morning paper I see

In the city I visit

In an overheard conversation I hear

In the space of twelve months.

In the book I read

Is his muscular prose, like

“The rotting bodies would dangle in their rough iron frames”

Telling stories of blood and suffering in Sydney, Castle Hill, Parramatta,

A far cry from the sterile blue smells of Blockbusters

In Newtown, Baulkham Hills, Parramatta,

Once the land of the Iora tribe,

Then a prison for imperial England,

Now a racing smog-filled city.

In the morning paper I see

His upcoming trial for dangerous driving, like

“Mr Hughes, 60, apparently was outraged by the incident”

The headline blaring “Art Critic Target Of Extortion”

They wouldn’t let him rest; crashing his Pulsar near Broome

Into the car holding a former armed robbery crim.

Once he is seriously injured with coma,

Then he is charged with dangerous driving,

Now his victims want thirty thousand.

In the city I visit

The trial is set for Monday, but

Hughes wants the extortionists there in the court,

A trial held in Perth, the wide, flat, dry city,

Regarded by its citizens as a secret to be kept

From everyone “back East” (they say, jerking east-bound thumbs),

Once a fertile stretch crossed by the Swan,

Then the final fledging convict outpost,

Now “the most isolated city in the world”.

In an overheard conversation

A woman tells her friends about Norfolk Island, like

“I couldn’t sleep; there was something there; all that terrible history”

Norfolk Island, where the convicts (says Hughes) were in demoralised torpor,

The second colony, hell-hole conjured up in an Italian restaurant,

A woman’s dreams in a place of blood and suffering,

Once a rock untouched by human presence,

Then (says Hughes) a template for the Gulag,

Now a holiday destination and a home for the quiet.

In the space of twelve months

I am back where I was, hotel room in Perth,

Where last May I read Hughes had a crash near Broome,

Flown to intensive care, Hospital in Perth,

World-renowned art critic, bestselling expatriate.

A cycle is closed, looped back on itself,

Once it began, its course unknown,

Then it went on, taking me on,

Now it is closed.

Robert Hughes is everywhere.