88 Quotes by Robert Hughes

In one sense, (Duchamp's) “The Large Glass” is a glimpse into Hell; a peculiarly modernist Hell of repetition and loneliness.

Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public

that great condenser of moral chaos, The City.

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre

Indeed, the idea that doubt can be heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne's old age, is one of the keys to our century. A touchstone of modernity itself.

The World's Fair audience tended to think of the machine as unqualifiedly good, strong, stupid and obedient. They thought of it as a giant slave, an untiring steel Negro, controlled by Reason in a world of infinite resources.

He had been always escaping, always rebelling, always fighting against authority, and always being flogged. There had been a whole lifetime of torment such as this; forty-two years of it; and there he stood, speaking softly, arguing his case well, and pleading while the tears ran down his face for some kindness, for some mercy in his old age. 'I have tried to escape; always to escape,' he said, 'as a bird does out of a cage. Is that unnatural; is that a great crime?

But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow.

Machines were the ideal metaphor for the central pornographic fantasy of the nineteenth century, rape followed by gratitude.