He eats dilettantes for breakfast.

This week's blog post is brought to you by intern Jennie!  

By now, we’re all aware of how awesome Robert Hughes is.  With a name like Robert Studley Forrest Hughes (for real, that's his full name), it’s no wonder why we find him so alluring and, dare I say, captivating.

And, judging by the great turnout we’ve been having, you all must find him equally captivating.

Thank you, thank you, everyone, for your continued support in our fun little project!  The topic of our fourth installment is Trouble in Utopia, and Ken Bloom, Director at the Tweed Museum of Art, will be speaking after the show.  Meet us at 11am at the Zinema 2 this Saturday, March 3rd for some fun and free (FREE!) entertainment!

Can’t make it this week? No worries! We have four more Saturdays to go.

And now, without further ado, our vocabulary word of the week:

dil•et•tante noun \ˈdi-lə-ˌtänt, -ˌtant; ˌdi-lə-ˈ\
1. an admirer or lover of the arts
2. a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge : dabbler

When using this word in public to impress your friends, just keep in mind that the last ‘e’ is silent.

To get a better idea what a dilettante is, here are some hopefully helpful examples of something one might say:

-“I think Van Gogh cut off his ear or something.”
-“Did you know the Mona Lisa is actually really small?”
-“Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, not the Sixteen Chapel.”

In contrast, an expert like Hughes might sound something more like this:

-“Duchamp is a hugely overrated artist. Duchamp was the first artist who really became a great master at the art of curating his own reputation.”
-“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.”
-“A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.”

Thank you, Robert Hughes, for your insight.

While a dilettante just has a casual interest in art, an expert like Robert Hughes lives for it.