Robert Hughes, art critic ofTimemagazine and twice winner of the American College Art Association's F.J. Mather Award for distinguished criticism, is author ofThe Shock of the New, ofHeaven and Hell in Western Art, and of the history of the transportation of convicts to Australia,The Fatal Shore. This was described by the Washington Post as "popular history in the best sense". It won the W.H. Smith Literary Award, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and theMelbourne AgePrize.
His most recent volume of criticism, a selection of essays on art and artists,Nothing if not Critical, was in the words of William Boyd, "criticism at its most intelligent and impressive, trenchant, lucid, elegantly written". His book on Barcelona, a stimulating survey of Catalan culture, was published to enormous acclaim and won the City of Barcelona's own El Brusi Prize. More recently Harvill has published Hughe'sAmerican Visions, a book accompanying a television programme on the development of American art.
Robert Hughes was awarded the Order of Australia in recognition of his literary achievements.