Slow art

With the death of the critic and historian Robert Hughes, a great beacon has gone out in the art world of the West. I take his absence personally, not because I knew the man (I met him only once), but because he was such an invigorating and perceptive guide to excellence. Of course I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he wrote like an angel (possibly a fallen one) and he certainly made you think and even revise your opinions. Although I was aware that he’d been unwell for a long time, I was unprepared for his death at the age of 74, and feel robbed of the books he didn’t write. What happened to the second volume of his memoirs, and what else might he have got around to writing?

Among the various tributes and obituaries I’ve read, the only one to come near the truth of the man was Adam Gopnik’s in the New Yorker.