537 Pussy Riot are not musicians; they are part of the West's attack on Russia - Israel Shamir

Pussy Riot are not musicians; they are part of the West's attack on
Russia - Israel Shamir

(1) My emails arrived in the Spam Folder - NB check it regularly
(2) I received the same mail 3 times: Banks fined for violating sanctions
(3) Pussy Riot's desecration of the sacred has Yewish underpinning -
Brother Nathanael
(4) NED-funded NGO supports Pussy Riot
(5) Assange wrong to back Pussy Riot - Come Carpentier (from Israel
Shamir's forum)
(6) Pussy Riot are not musicians; they are part of the West's attack on
Russia - Israel Shamir
(7) Robert Hughes exposed much Modern Art as junk, promoted by a cabal
of critics, curators and art investors

(1) My emails arrived in the Spam Folder - NB check it regularly

Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:06:01 +0900 Subject: Just to let you know
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>

that two of "Peter Myers"'s mail arrived into our Spam Folder as of
yesterday;
one starting with 'Zionism' the other one with (3); the one re
Stephen Sn.was well received into our INBOX folder.

Best
chris

(2) I received the same mail 3 times: Banks fined for violating sanctions

From: "Web of Debt" <Web.of.Debt@kpnmail.nl>
Subject: About some messages : they came later...
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:18:17 +0200

Hello Peter,

glad that you are back !

I see this email , the first one since 19 july ( Syrian rebels) , which
I received at 4.30 hours.

Then five hours later I received the same mail 3 times: Banks fined
for violating sanctions...
Then a few more minutes later I received : Zionists pursue banks over
currency transfers to Iran.

I hope this will inform you about what happened.

Best wishes, Jos.

Reply (Peter M.):

I am only getting back on my feet now after a few months' dealing with
problems.

About 20% of my readership do not receive these bulletins. I get bounce
messages, mainly from servers in the US, where ISPs surreptitiously
block emails even though I am no longer on Black Lists.

To test whether my emails get through, I include one of my own addresses
in the mailing list.

I found that my email about Banks was not getting through to the Inbox
of my Gmail account. So I kept sending it, in different ways.

Later, I found these emails in the Spam folder. My own emails had been
filed as Spam. Yet I do not have any Filter set.

The only reason they could have been filed in the Spam folder is that
they contained the words "Yewish" and "Yews" (note the substitution,
which, since this incident, I am trying as a way to avoid being filtered
out again). Yet this email did not demean "Yews". It merely pointed out
that those behind the fining of the Banks had to be in a different camp
from those in the Banks. One group of Yews was dominating another.

You can mention any other group of people with impunity - including
Freemasons. Only one group causes the search engines to freak out.

Some people may still not have received the email about Banks. Instead
of sending it out yet again, I have uploaded it to my website at
http://mailstar.net/banks-fined.html

Note the statement of Eitan Arusy, "dollar transfers, even from
Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, must comply with U.S. law". That is, any
transaction involving US Dollars, anywhere in the world, is subject to
US authorities. That's Hegemony.

Peter

(3) Pussy Riot's desecration of the sacred has Yewish underpinning -
Brother Nathanael

Brother Nathanael <bronathanael@yahoo.com> 20 August 2012 16:06

Pussy Riot's Global Showdown

http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=747

August 19, 2012 @ 10:04 pm

By Brother Nathanael Kapner

{http://www.realjewnews.com/
My Name Is Brother Nathanael Kapner
I'm A "Street Evangelist"
I Grew Up As A Jew
I'm Now An Orthodox Christian
I Wish To Warn How Zionist Jews
Are Destroying Christianity Throughout The World}

Some call it a clash of civilizations but I call it a clash of spirituality.

On the one side is the West's promotion of decadence—which leads to a
police state—and on the other is the East's, that is, Russia's promotion
of a Christian society.

And the pawns in this global showdown are three young girls of the
Russian punk group, Pussy Riot.

In February 2012, these girls—part of a staged "protest", largely funded
by the Yewish CIA cover, the National Endowment for Democracy, led by
its Yewish founder, Carl Gershman—entered Christ The Saviour Cathedral
in Moscow and performed a sacrilegious dance. Mocking the Cross was part
of their blasphemy.

The cameras were ready and the script was carefully written …yes, attack
what Yewry fears most, the "Symphony of Church and State," the Byzantine
ideal which Russia inherited and Putin is fostering.

It is Putin and his government's strong tie to the Orthodox Church, the
"Symphony of the Spiritual and the Temporal"—for this is what's at stake
here—that these worthless girls were instructed to denounce through a
'media event' easily propagated by the Yewish globalized press.

And one look at the Russian supporters of Pussy Riot's desecration of
the sacred evinces a strong Yewish underpinning:

Boris Nemtsov – Valerie Novodvorskaya – Democracy's pin-up boy, chess
player Garry Kasperov – Leonid Gozman – and Vladimir Posner.

This past week, Pussy Riot was handed a lenient 2 year jail sentence
instead of the mandatory 7 years stipulated by Russian law for
desecrating a religious site.

Now think for a minute. If a punk group did the same thing in a
synagogue every media venue would be crying bloody murder and World
Yewry would be demanding the punks be hung by their toes.

But this is about a Church and the Yewish-led West is all in an uproar
over the Russian verdict. Russia's reaction? The West can shove it.

This is illustrated by the Russian people's attitude toward the old hag
Madonna's August 9th concert in St Petersburg…mostly attended by Western
outsiders.

Responding to Madonna's lewd promotion of Pussy Riot's 'right of
artistic expression,' Russian deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin
called Madonna a "moralizing whore," adding, "with age every former slut
tries to lecture everyone on morality especially on overseas tours."

Upping the ante, citizens of St Petersburg filed a 10-million dollar
law-suit against Madonna for preaching homosexuality to minors, a
violation of Russian law.

The showdown has arrived. Pussy Riot is only a small skirmish in the
LARGER clash of spirituality upon us.

You see, the Zionist West with its spiritual decay is on the decline.
Yet they're not going to go down without a fight.

But Christian Russia with its Spiritual ripening is on the rise.

"A Star shall rise in the East," Dostoyevsky once proclaimed.

My friends, the battle against the wicked West has only just begun.

(4) NED-funded NGO supports Pussy Riot

http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2012/08/pussy-riots-stunning-victory-over-kremlin/

Pussy Riot's 'stunning victory' over Kremlin

Democracy Digest

August 15, 2012

"On Friday, Judge Marina Syrova will deliver her verdict in the trial of
three members of the female punk group Pussy Riot, who performed their
profanity-laced anthem "Mother of God, Cast Putin Out" on the altar of
Moscow's Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour in February," writes John
Lough. ...

Fellow rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, head of the For Human Rights NGO,
said Judge Syrova may yet play "good cop" to the prosecutor's "bad cop".
"It is possible this is a political game. The prosecutor asked for a
real sentence and the judge could free them. I will only be in favor,"
he said.

"But the fact that the authorities are looking for support among the
most conservative groups [such as the church] is a very troubling
signal. It means that the intelligentsia for a large part have turned
their backs on the regime."

Tanya Lokshina, head of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said
that hopes for the trio's release remained dim given what he said were
clear procedural abuses during the trial, which critics say has become a
showcase for the inadequacies of the Russian legal system. ...

The Moscow Helsinki Group and For Human Rights are supported by the
National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy
assistance group.

(5) Assange wrong to back Pussy Riot - Come Carpentier (from Israel
Shamir's forum)

Re: [shamireaders] Assange's speech

Come Carpentier <comecarpentier@gmail.com> 22 August 2012 17:04

In response to John Spritzler, I would agree that the wrong aspects and
tendencies in the Russian government need to be opposed but that is far
from what "Pussy Riot" (the name they chose says it all) are doing. They
are mocking the christian liturgy by invading and desecrating a symbolic
national place of worship (I note in passing that the balaklavas they
use are also the distinctive headgear of bank robbers as well as
terrorists, which is why many Western states ban full face covering in
public).They also show contempt for the electoral process in Russia
which, whether they like it or not, gave Putin a majority in conditions
that were generally free and fair. The West is so exasperated by Putin's
remaining popularity that it claims that he should not have stood for
election anyway because an election could only have been fair if he had
not been a candidate. Pussy Riot is also openly calling for a violent
revolution and the murder of Putin (how is that for the democratic
West?). The fact that the Church in Russia is conservative can be seenin
fact as a blessing (even if a mixed one) when we compare it to the
utterly politicized, "ideologically" correct Protestant and Catholic
denominations.

No one who supports a restoration of spiritual values in a healthy
society can express sympathy for Pussy Riot. There can be disagreement
as to what sort of punishment they deserve but Russian law, good or bad,
should be applied without interference. The Western masters of discourse
realise that and are trying to convince the public that there is no
judicial system or Parliament in Russia, only Putin alone who decides
case by case the fate of 150 million Russians every day... He must be a
busy man!

Assange is unfortunately prone to the mistake of many well meaning
anti-establishment voices in the West. They rail against the Global
Leviathan but they want to get rid of those governments which stand
their ground against it. I have friends in Venezuela who are well aware
of the nefarious role of the US in their country's past but who are
desperate to see the end of Chavez even though it may bring the pro-US
politicians and oligarchs back in full force. They prefer to put their
hope in some utopian non-violent reform inspired by Gandhi's thought,
the Catholic Church and "middle of the road" environmentalism. I wish
them luck!

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 1:07 AM, Michael Gunin <mgunin@gmail.com> wrote:

It would be interesting to see some clear evidences regarding Pussy
Riot's affiliation with Western NGOs and agencies.

However, from my point of view, this is more of an internal affair
related to the artifical clericalization of Russian society and a
reactionary role the official church plays here. Authorities should stop
the extreme "patriotic" Orthodox right-wingers from teaching the secular
society what we should do and what we're not allowed to. Otherwise,
turning into a fundamentalist country similar to Saudi Arabia seems
something worse than any kind of colour revolution.

{Gunin now quotes an earlier email by Come Carpentier}

2012/8/21 Come Carpentier <comecarpentier@gmail.com>

Dear Israel Shamir and Friends,

I read the transcript of Julian Assange's address from the balcony of
the Ecuadorian Embassy and I found it to be a powerful and inspiring
rallying cry against the tyranny of the powers that be but I was
disappointed by his uncalled for reference to the sentence meted out
to the "punkers" of the Pussy Riot Gang in Moscow, as if it part
related to the persecution launched against him and other whistle
blowers.

Yet, as you better than most are aware, the vulgar stunt staged by the
Punks in the Moscow Cathedral to try triggering a popular revolt
against the elected government or at least to damage it in the eyes of
the country and of the outside world, has nothing to do with the
Wikileaks campaign. It has been reported that the "Pussy Riot" group
which speaks surprisingly fluent american English and seems to behave
in every way as if it had just been flown in from California to
Russia, was in fact acting under the instructions of certain American
government-related agencies, which would account for the immediate
interest and tremendous publicity they got as soon as they were
arrested and tried. Their action seems to reflect a typical "western"
strategy to try provoking an "unliked"foreign government into a
reaction that might then unleash a chain reaction of rebellion and
repression. It is rather clear that the "Pussy Riot" which is so upset
that Putin was elected that it hopes to force it to quit through
street protests, is on the contrary quite happy with American policies
at home and abroad.

I am afraid, therefore that Assange has fallen into the trap of so
many Western and Eastern "liberal" or Libertarians who end up wanting
to overthrow any and all authority, including those powers that still
resist, at least in part, the global imperial behemoth. It is a rather
self-contradicting and potentially self-destructive attitude. If
Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and all other recalcitrant and
"authoritarian" regimes (including Ecuador) are brought into the
global mainstream, then there will be no more counter-force to the
Empire's sway.

What do you think Assange think in this regard?

Greetings

Come

--
Michael Gunin
mgunin@gmail.com

(6) Pussy Riot are not musicians; they are part of the West's attack on
Russia - Israel Shamir
[shamireaders] Pussy Riot - Secret History Corrected

Israel Shamir <adam@israelshamir.net> 22 August 2012 20:14

Pussy Riot - Secret History

By Israel Shamir

Universally admired, Pussy Riot (or PR for short) have been promoted as
superstars. But what are they? A rock or punk group they are not. A
British journalist marvelled: they produce no music, no song, no
painting, nada, rien, nothing. How can they be described as "artists"?
This was a severe test for their supporters, but they passed it with
flying honours: that famous lover-of-art, the US State Department, paid
for their first ever single being produced by The Guardian out of some
images and sounds.

We are able to stomach obscenity and blasphemy; I am a great admirer of
Notre Dame de Fleurs by Jean Genet, who combined both. However, the PR
never wrote, composed or painted anything of value at all. Chris
Randolph defended them in Counterpunch by comparing them with "the
controversial Yegor Letov". What a misleading comparison! Letov wrote
poetry, full of obscenity but it still was poetry, while the PR have
nothing but Public Relations.

Hell-bent on publicity, but artistically challenged, three young women
from Russia decided – well, it sounds like a limerick. They stole a
frozen chicken from a supermarket and used it as dildo; they filmed the
act, called it "art" and placed it on the web. (It is still there) Their
other artistic achievements were an orgy in a museum and a crude
presentation of an erect prick.

Even in these dubious pieces of art their role was that of technical
staff: the glory went to a Russian-Israeli artist Plucer-Sarno of
Mevasseret Zion, who claimed the idea, design and copyright for himself
and collected a major Russian prize. The future PR members got nothing
and were described by Plucer as "ambitious provincials on the make", or
worse.

Lately they have tried to ride on a bandwagon of political struggle.
That was another flop. They poured a flood of obscene words on Putin -
in Red Square, in subway (underground) stations - with zero effect. They
weren't arrested, they weren't fined, just chased away as a nuisance.
And they did not attract the attention of people. It is important to
remember that Putin is an avowed enemy of Russian oligarchs, owners of
the major bulk of Russian media and providers of the Moscow literati, so
they print on a daily basis so much anti-Putin invective, that it's lost
its shock value. You can't invent a new diatribe against Putin – it has
been already said and published. And Putin practically never interferes
with the freedom of the press.

My foreign journalist friends are usually amazed by the unanimity and
ferocity of the anti-Putin campaign in Russian media. It can be compared
with the attacks on G W Bush in the liberal papers in the US, but in the
US, there are many conservative papers that supported Bush. Putin has
practically no support in the mainstream media, all of it owned by media
barons. A valuable exception is TV, but it is expressly apolitical and
provides mainly low-brow entertainment, also presented by anti-Putin
activists like Mlle Xenia Sobtchak. So PR failed profoundly to wake up
the beast.

Eventually the young viragos were mobilised for an attack on the Church.
By that time they were willing to do anything for their bit of
publicity. And the anti-Church campaign started a few months ago, quite
suddenly as if by command. The Russian Church had 20 years of peace,
recovering after the Communist period, and it was surprised by ferocity
of the attack.

Though this subject calls for longer exposition, let us be brief. After
the collapse of the USSR, the Church remained the only important
spiritual pro-solidarity force in Russian life. The Yeltsin and Putin
administrations were as materialist as the communists; they preached and
practiced social Darwinism of neo-Liberal kind. The Church offered
something beside the elusive riches on earth. Russians who lost the glue
of solidarity previously provided by Communists eagerly flocked to the
alternative provided by the Church.

The government and the oligarchs treated the Church well, as the Church
had a strong anti-Communist tendency, and the haves were still afraid of
the Reds leading the have-nots. The Church flourished, many beautiful
cathedrals were rebuilt, many monasteries came back after decades of
decay. The newly empowered church became a cohesive force in Russia.

As it became strong, the Church began to speak for the poor and
dispossessed; the reformed Communists led by the Church-going Gennadi
Zuganov, discovered a way to speak to the believers. A well-known
economist and thinker, Michael Khazin, predicted that the future belongs
to a new paradigm of Red Christianity, something along the lines of
Roger Garaudy's early thought. The Red Christian project is a threat to
the elites and a hope for the world, he wrote. Besides, the Russian
church took a very Russian and anti-globalist position.

This probably hastened the attack, but it was just a question of time
when the global anti-Christian forces would step forward and attack the
Russian Church like they attacked the Western Church. As Russia entered
the WTO and adopted Western mores, it had to adopt secularization. And
indeed the Russian Church was attacked by forces that do not want Russia
to be cohesive: the oligarchs, big business, the media lords, the
pro-Western intelligentsia of Moscow, and Western interests which
naturally prefer Russia divided against itself.

This offensive against the Church began with some minor issues: the
media was all agog about Patriarch's expensive watch, a present from the
then President Medvedev. Anti-religious fervour was high among liberal
opposition that demonstrated against Putin before the elections and
needed a new horse to flog. A leading anti-Putin activist Viktor
Shenderovich said he would understand if the Russian Orthodox priests
were slain like they were in 1920s. Yet another visible figure among the
liberal protesters, Igor Eidman, exclaimed,"exterminate the vermin"- the
Russian Church – in the rudest biological terms.

The alleged organiser of the PR, Marat Gelman, a Russian Yewish art
collector, has been connected with previous anti-Christian art actions
which involved icon-smashing, imitation churches of enemas. His – and
PR's problem was that it was difficult to provoke reaction of the
Church. PR made two attempts to provoke public indignation in the second
cathedral of Moscow, the older Elochovsky Cathedral; both times they
were expelled but not arrested. The third time, they tried harder; they
went to St Savior Cathedral that was demolished by Lazar Kaganovich in
1930s and rebuilt in 1990s; they added more blasphemy of the most
obscene kind, and still they were allowed to leave in peace. Police
tried their best to avoid arresting the viragos, but they had no choice
after PR uploaded a video of their appearance in the cathedrals with an
obscene soundtrack.

During the trial, the defence and the accused did their worst to
antagonize the judge by threatening her with the wrath of the United
States (sic!) and by defiantly voicing anti-Christian hate speeches. The
judge had no choice but to find the accused guilty of hate crime
(hooliganism with religious hate as the motive). The prosecution did not
charge the accused with a more serious hate crime "with intent to cause
religious strife", though it could probably be made to stick. (It would
call for a stiffer sentence; swastika-drawers charged with intent to
cause strife receive five years of jail).

Two years' sentence is quite in line with prevailing European practice.
For much milder anti-Yewish hate talk, European countries customarily
sentence offenders to two-to-five years of prison for the first offence.
The Russians applied hate crime laws to offenders against Christian
faith, and this is probably a Russian novelty. The Russians proved that
they care for Christ as much as the French care for Auschwitz, and this
shocked the Europeans who apparently thought 'hate laws' may be applied
only to protect Yews and gays. The Western governments call for more
freedom for the anti-Christian Russians, while denying it for holocaust
revisionists in their midst.

The anti-Putin opposition flocked to support PR. A radical charismatic
opposition leader, the poet Eduard Limonov wrote that the opposition
made a mistake supporting PR, as they antagonise the masses; the chasm
between the masses and the opposition grows. But his voice was crying in
the wilderness, and the rest of the opposition happily embraced the PR
cause, trying to turn it into a weapon against Putin. The Western media
and governments also used it to attack Putin. A Guardian editorial
called on Putin to resign. Putin called for clemency for PR, and the
government was embarrassed by the affair. But they were left with no
choice: the invisible organisers behind PR wanted to have the viragos in
jail, and so they did.

Commercially, they hit jackpot. With support of Madonna and the State
Department, they are likely to leave jail ready for a world tour and
photo ops at the White House. They registered their name as a trade mark
and began to issue franchises. And their competitors, the Femen group
(whose art is showing off their boobs in unusual places) tried to beat
PR by chopping down a large wooden cross installed in memory of Stalin's
victims. Now the sky is the limit.

In August, vacation season, when there is not much hard news and
newspaper readers are at the seashore or countryside, the PR trial
provided much needed entertainment for man and beast. Hopefully it will
drop from the agenda with the end of the silly season, but do not bet on
it.

Israel Shamir reports from Moscow, his email is adam@israelshamir.net

(7) Robert Hughes exposed much Modern Art as junk, promoted by a cabal
of critics, curators and art investors

The man who dared to tell the truth about the charlatans of modern art

By HARRY MOUNT

PUBLISHED: 21:52 GMT, 7 August 2012 | UPDATED: 23:22 GMT, 7 August 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2185122/Robert-Hughes-death-The-man-dared-tell-truth-charlatans-modern-art.html

Pretentious pedlars of junk masquerading as art can breathe a little
easier today, for the voice of one of their greatest foes has been
stilled.

To the very end, the writer Robert Hughes argued brilliantly that, where
much modern art was concerned, the emperor had no clothes.

The Australian, who has died at 74 after a long illness, saw the Damien
Hirsts and Tracey Emins of the modern art world as fly-by-night con
artists, unencumbered by skill, who floated to the top of their
profession on a sea of money supported by a cabal of critics, curators
and art investors.

'Hirst is basically a pirate,' Hughes wrote of our richest living artist
before a record-setting £111?million auction of the artist's work at
Sotheby's in 2008.

'His skill is shown by the way in which he has managed to bluff so many
art-related people (from museum personnel to billionaires in the New
York real-estate trade) into giving credence to his originality and the
importance of his "ideas".'

Hughes — a burly mountain of a man, said by one fellow countryman to
resemble a 'brick dunny', or outhouse — held no truck with the nebulous
realm of 'concept art'. He believed artists should make things, should
draw, paint, build and carve, and do those things well.

Sadly, it seemed to Hughes as if, all too often, those people dominating
the powerful positions in the art world, and pulling the strings of the
art market, had been deluded into thinking otherwise.

It is a favourite trick of such fools to dismiss someone like Hughes as
an old fogey — as they also do to the brilliant Brian Sewell of the
London Evening Standard, one of the last surviving critics in Hughes's
mould, who really knows his stuff and is not prepared to yield to the
passing idiocies of fashion.

Hughes knew the difference between good modern art and rubbish modern
art, and he really let rip — in glorious, beautiful, thundering prose —
when it came to pointing out the vast difference between the two.

He made his name with the book and TV series The Shock Of The New, which
described the progress of modern art from the end of the 19th century to
the end of the 20th.

Hughes explained why Picasso mattered and translated the alien
dreamscapes of the Surrealists into language everyone could understand.

He was a tremendous fan of much modern art of the last century or so,
but he diagnosed a sudden and steep falling-off in quality in the 1970s,
with the emerging fashion for avant-garde works of minimal skill.

He believed that something had gone horrifically wrong in the last 40
years, as a result of what he called 'the appalling commercialisation of
the art world'.

Money had become the driving force — and those with too much of it often
have too little taste.

'Most of the time they [the rich art investors] buy what other people
buy,' Hughes wrote. 'They move in great schools, like bluefish, all
identical. There is safety in numbers.'

Not surprisingly he triggered a backlash. For the power brokers of
modern art are a notoriously touchy, defensive bunch. But Hughes
couldn't have cared less. He dismissed personal attacks by saying: 'As
far as I can make out, when an artist says that I am conservative, it
means I haven't praised him recently.'

Damien Hirst was his bête noire. Hughes damned the Briton's work as
'both simple-minded and sensationalist', remarking acidly of Hirst's
infamous dead shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde: 'One might as
well get excited about seeing a dead halibut on a slab in Harrods food
hall.'

As for Hirst's equally notorious diamond-encrusted skull — sold for
£50?million in 2007 — Hughes bluntly dismissed it as 'mere bling'.

Staring at the artist's sculpture The Virgin Mother — a bronze
monstrosity showing the Madonna half with skin and half without — Hughes
declared: 'Isn't it a miracle what so much money and so little talent
can produce?'

Nor was Hirst's partner-in-crime Tracey Emin spared the vitriol. Her
1998 'masterpiece' My Bed — a stained, unmade bed surrounded by knickers
and condoms — was, Hughes scoffed, nothing more than 'a stale icon of
sluttish housekeeping'.

Whatever the fashionable art world thought of him, ordinary art lovers
adored him. A true rebel, he became more of a revolutionary as he got older.

In his memoir, Things I Didn't Know, Hughes admitted to being an
unashamed elitist: 'I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the
mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full
to partial consciousness.

'I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work
or a good carpenter chopping dovetails.?.?. My main job is to
distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental, and
boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has.'

Although an exile in New York, he continued to care deeply about his
native Australia. His 1987 book The Fatal Shore, on the history of the
British penal colonies and the first European settlers in Australia,
became an international best-seller. He wrote monographs on the Spanish
artist Goya, Lucian Freud and the city of Rome.

For the true giants of art, Hughes was an unstinting champion. In his
eyes, 'a string of brushmarks on a lace collar in a Velasquez' were far
'more radical' than Hirst's shark 'murkily disintegrating in its tank'. ==

The acid wit of a very critical critic...

On Damien Hirst
'His presence in a collection is a sure sign of dullness of taste.'

On Andy Warhol
'He was one of the stupidest people I'd ever met in my life. He had
nothing to say.'

And on Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe...
'Can you imagine what it would be like getting up in the morning and the
first thing you see is the by now unspeakably tedious cliche of
Marilyn's face staring at you?'

On elitism
'I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise
and fully literate ones.'

On greedy art collectors
'The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.'

On rich philistines
'So much of art — not all of it thank God, but a lot of it — has just
become a kind of cruddy game for the self-aggrandisement of the rich and
the ignorant.'

On second-rate exhibitions
'An ideal museum show would be a mating of Brideshead Revisited with
House & Garden, provoking intense and pleasurable nostalgia for a past
that none of its audience has had.'

On money
'On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea
that one benefits from cold water, crusts and debt collectors is now
almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging.'

On self-doubt
'The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is
given to the less talented as a consolation prize.'

On being a critic
'It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any
control over the action going on upstairs.'