Art critic and broadcaster Robert Hughes continues his three-part series on architects. This week’s programme, on Albert Speer (last week was Gaud!, with Mies van der Rohe concluding), is particularly interesting, because in it Hughes rediscovers the tapes of his own 1981 interview with Hitler’s architect, recorded two years before Speer’s death.
Speer argues that his chief fault in the Nazi era was ambition: Hitler gave him an opportunity no 28-year-old could refuse. Hughes asks if Speer was really as innocent as he pretended, and considers the responsibility of the artist, in a programme that has implications for art, history, politics and morality.
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