Will I love The Shock of the New?

This is a book, but it was also a fabulous TV series. I first read the book when I was trying to make a living as a freelance writer. I couldn’t afford to buy it, so I went to a different bookstore every day and read it through. (I have since bought myself a copy.)

Hughes traces the art of the 20th century following movements like Cubism and Dadaism. I found this book so engrossing because Hughes really takes on the idea that this art was made by people who thought it could change the world, that it could shape… show more.

This is probably the best, most exhilarating book about modern art I’ve ever read, written by one of the most erudite writers who ever lived. I read it when I was about 11 or 12, and it made me passionate about art and art history.

Hughes was such a good writer, and he made me want to get into writing myself. The BBC made a series based on the book. 

This book gave me the map to modern art I have long sought. Fair-minded in its judgments, rich in detail, and always lucid even in technical matters, Robert Hughes helped me understand what makes twentieth-century Western art so novel, even startling, while also showing its continuities with its European roots and its borrowings from other continents.

No other book did a better job of helping me appreciate the modern and the postmodern.