Books, Arts & Manners: Art, American-Style

American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, by Robert Hughes (Knopf, 635 pp., $65)

SOME people will find it odd that American Visions—which, I predict, will assume its place as the best general history of American art—should have been written by a resident alien, specifically by an Australian and sub-specifically by Robert Hughes. How dare this furriner presume to expatiate on our precious culture? But when one considers that there seems to be nothing wrong with a Briton like Sir John Pope-Hennessy writing about trecento Siena, or the German-born Nikolaus Pevsner writing about English Gothic architecture, or the American Robert Rosenblum writing about eighteenth-century France, it is only fair to conclude that Mr. Hughes has as much right as anyone else. At all events, whatever doubts one might have on this score will be dispelled within the first few pages of this book, which has been published to coincide with Mr. Hughes’s eight-part PBS doc- ; umentary. The author, who has lived in this country for thirty years and is T#me magazine’s art critic, brings to his subject a fully sufficient understanding of American history combined with a truly impressive knowledge of art and its history. Most important, he has an all-too-rare ability to turn his treatment into a dignified entertainment, without falling into the trap either of condescending generality or of nitpicking pedantry.

JG

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James Gardner

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American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, by Robert Hughes (Knopf, 635 pp., $65)

SOME people will find it odd that American Visions—which, I predict, will assume its place as the best general history of American art—should have been written by a resident alien, specifically by an Australian and sub-specifically by Robert Hughes. How dare this furriner presume to expatiate on our precious culture? But when one considers that there seems to be nothing wrong with a Briton like Sir John Pope-Hennessy writing about trecento Siena, or the German-born Nikolaus Pevsner writing about English Gothic architecture, or the American Robert Rosenblum writing about eighteenth-century France, it is only fair to conclude that Mr. Hughes has as much right as anyone else. At all events, whatever doubts one might have on this score will be dispelled within the first few pages of this book, which has been published to coincide with Mr. Hughes’s eight-part PBS doc- ; umentary. The author, who has lived in this country for thirty years and is T#me magazine’s art critic, brings to his subject a fully sufficient understanding of American history combined with a truly impressive knowledge of art and its history. Most important, he has an all-too-rare ability to turn his treatment into a dignified entertainment, without falling into the trap either of condescending generality or of nitpicking pedantry.