Time’s Arrow

In the '70s, when Robert Hughes recapitulated and refined his ideas about Australian art in an ABC TV series, the brio and drama he brought to it were as dazzling as any Brett Whitely painting, any Opera House giving definition to a great Harbour: you knew you were in the presence of a first-rate critic who was also a great performer. A critic is not supposed to provide the kind of epiphany that is created by great works of art like Nolan's Kelly paintings and the novels of Patrick White, yet Hughes came across like Olivier and Tynan rolled into one. He had what Aristotle described as the most fundamental gift a writer can have, the gift of metaphor, but he was also a magician of his electronic medium, like Kenneth Clark, or Alastair Cooke on radio.