ROBER HUGHES: THE ONE AND ONLY

To set out to produce an entire special issue of TIME with a writing staff of one would seem the sheerest folly. But if the focus of the issue is American art and the writer is Robert Hughes, then it begins to look like wisdom. For nobody comes to the subject better primed than Hughes. He has observed the U.S. art scene firsthand since becoming TIME’s art critic in 1970. Three years ago, he embarked on a historical, eight-part TV series about it, also called American Visions, which is airing on pbs from May 28 to June 18. In conjunction with the series, he turned out a copiously illustrated, 250,000-word book under the same title, which has just been published by Knopf.

As an Australian, Hughes enjoys a special vantage point on America’s visual culture. “You need to be an alien to do this sort of semi-anthropology,” he says. “You need to be both inside and outside the subject.” Knowledgeable as he was when he started, Hughes still found that his years of working on American Visions taught him a few things about our art–and our country. One lesson, learned while shooting the TV series: “The rarest thing in the Great American Outdoors is a moment of silence. Every time we turned on a camera in some national park or other, a chain saw began howling a mile away, or children in beanies appeared over a nearby rock asking what we were up to.”

Hughes’ remarkable capacity to balance his reviewing for TIME with ambitious outside projects is nothing new. American Visions, the book, follows such Hughes best sellers as Culture of Complaint and The Fatal Shore; the TV series takes its place with his 1981 series (and companion volume) The Shock of the New. Now that he has brought off the feat of writing a whole magazine, what does Hughes have in mind for the future? Well, he’s thinking about a book on Goya–but he’s in no hurry to get to it. “The donkey,” he says, “needs to graze a while after dragging such a load up such a hill.” All of us who have worked with him on this issue know that the climb has been steep and hard. But we’re sure you’ll agree that the view from the top is splendid.