AN EYE ON AMERICA AND ITS ART; HUGHES GOES BEYOND THE GALLERY WITH BOLD STROKES IN PBS SERIES.

Byline: Mary F. Pols Daily News Staff Writer

Always a critic, Robert Hughes shunts aside the remains of his Four Seasons' huevos rancheros with the pronouncement that they were quite nice but not spicy enough.

Having successfully both demolished and diminished the eggs, America's foremost art critic sits down in his hotel room and sharpens his tongue on various subjects that have little or nothing to do with the art world.

Thus it is no surprise that his new art series, ``American Visions,'' which makes its American debut on PBS tonight, and the lusciously illustrated book that accompanies it, are saturated with the opinions and viewpoints of Hughes himself.

``They are my programs, and they represent my point of view,'' he said, leaning forward and raising his voice to a rolling boil before dissolving into hearty laughter. ``MINE ... ALL MINE.''

For this he makes no apologies. Neither the book nor the series was ever intended to be a bias-free, straightforward piece of scholarship.

``I think it is a better way of doing things to be quite straightforward about being opinionated,'' he added. ``People can sort of trust you, make a basic sort of act of however-tentative faith in your credibility and intellectual reasonableness.''

He exhales opinions as easily as he does Marlboros. They zing relentlessly out of his mouth, delivered in an Australian-accented voice that simultaneously - and conveniently - drops in volume and speeds up whenever he's saying anything particularly naughty or funny. Which is frequently.

In the course of an hour, he declares that network television is made for morons and PBS is working below its proper IQ level, describes pundit and Picasso biographer Arianna Huffington as ``that appalling Greek'' and reveals that the members of the extreme environmentalist group Earth First! he interviews on his new eight-hour television series on art in America ``stunk like polecats'' in person.

Those who do trust Hughes the critic and tune into all or part of the series will find themselves catapulted into a tour of America and her art that reaches far beyond museum walls, with the slightly portly, ruddy-faced Hughes as their well-informed guide.

``I saw more of America than I had ever seen before or probably ever will again,'' Hughes said.

He pops up on camera throughout the series; looking Gap-casual at the Hoover Dam, windswept in Prouts Neck, Maine; a little uncomfortable at the wheel of a convertible in New Mexico; and dashingly autumnal in barn-coat chic on the streets of New York.

Hughes' role as star narrator and clotheshorse aside, his accomplishment is considerable. He manages to weave American history and culture - from the earliest settlements to the present - together so cohesively that the art seems to spill naturally out of the picture he presents, falling into place in a way that makes perfect sense.

It's a persuasive portrait, one that requires a creator as cocky as Hughes to carry it off.

He calls the series and book - titled ``American Visions: The Epic History of Art of America'' - a love letter to America, his adopted home since Time magazine lured him to New York as a young man 27 years ago to be its art critic.

But in scope, the project is perhaps more a love affair, lived over three long years, filled with intensity, whirlwind road trips, long conversations meant to get at the heart of America's complex personality and finally concluding with an emotional explosion as devastating to his own psyche as any breakup.

``I had a crash,'' Hughes said simply.

With the help of a therapist and an extraordinary amount of discipline, Hughes kept plugging away on the 620-page book, rising before dawn to write as he faced a deadline with serious financial incentive.

``Whatever happened, I had to get the book finished,'' Hughes said. ``Because if the series comes out and there is no book, you know, it is like having all these tunas swimming around the boat and you don't have a hook on your line. To put it crudely, the series sells the book. And you are not going to make money doing a series of this kind.''

Nearing the end of an eight-city tour to promote the project, Hughes' voice is worn out from radio interviews, and he looks rather weary, more interested in a restorative fishing trip in Australia next month than in his next book, most likely a biography of Goya. On screen, he's rather imposing, particularly when he's tossing off withering remarks like this one, directed at abstract artist Barnett Newman's paintings ``Stations of the Cross'':

``As a narrative of the passion and suffering of Jesus Christ, they're absurd,'' he says. ``Bad luck, Barney. You're lost.''

But in person, he's far less curmudgeonly, apologizing for his unmade bed and the wreckage of his breakfast. He affably answers what must be by now very familiar questions about ``American Visions'' without any sign of impatience and with great humor.

He switches into a dead-on impression of one of the members of Earth First

appearing in ``The Wilderness and the West,'' the third part of the series dealing with how America's landscape shaped her art. The environmental group is shown in a North Carolina forest, wailing over the old-growth trees cut down by loggers.

The camera lingers on one woman sobbing to the lost trees, and sitting in his hotel room, Hughes mimics her wickedly, then cackles with delight. He's aware that the segment makes the group look pretty wacky, but he doesn't care.

``What a bunch of freaks,'' Hughes said. ``Am I supposed to be some sort of conservative because these people are self-satirists?''

He said his friend, Peter Matthiessen, author of ``At Play in the Fields of the Lord'' and several nature books, begged him to remove the piece, saying its presence in ``American Visions'' would be detrimental to the environmental movement.

``And I said, `No, I'm just showing a bunch of eco-freaks,' '' Hughes said said. ``I'm not suggesting this represents the environmental movement, which I ardently support.''

Such defiance is typical of Hughes. He's come under fire from a few critics for leaving various artists out of ``American Visions.'' He dismisses this criticism as the ``silly'' viewpoint of the politically correct police.

``Obviously, if you go through the book and you have some a priori notion of how many black artists, how many white artists, how many gays, how many straights, how many Jews, how many gentiles and so forth there should be, then somebody is bound to find some leave-outs,'' he said. ``It was never my intention for the book to be an encyclopedia of art.''

``American Visions'' is Hughes' second television series; his 1981 series on modern art, ``The Shock of the New,'' played to 26 million television viewers and made the florid-faced Hughes something of a star, at least in public-television circles. It, too, had a companion book.

In true 1990s form, ``American Visions'' is a multimedia package. Time will publish 5 million copies of a special edition of the magazine, printed on heavy stock. There are also two Web sites devoted to the project, one created by PBS, the other by Time-Warner, which co-produced the whole series with the British Broadcasting Corp. Finally, for the human touch, Hughes will deliver a series of six lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this fall.

With this kind of blockbuster packaging, what's next? Is the ``American Visions'' set of collectible glasses going to turn up at MacDonald's any day now? Unlikely. But as Hughes readily admits, he is trying to reach a broader audience than just the usual ``Masterpiece Theatre'' crowd. He describes his book as for the ``general intelligent reader.''

In Hughes' ideal world, a series like ``American Visions'' would run on mainstream network television. Back when he was younger and perhaps even brasher, working on ``The Shock of the New,'' he was at a dinner party with former CBS chairman William Paley. As Hughes explained his series on modern art, Paley reacted enthusiastically, praising him for the idea.

``I said, `If you think it is so great, Mr. Paley, why don't you stick it on CBS?' '' Hughes said. ``And his hooded old eyes dropped a millimeter and he said, `Are you crazy?' And that is about where it was back then - and even more so now.''

This sends the highbrow critic off on a rant against American television. Why, oh why can't it be more like his precious BBC?

``American network television is made by fairly smart people for morons, and its object is to make people stupider than they were when they started watching it,'' he declares emphatically.

But then he pauses. Like his breakfast, lacking in spice but still quite nice, there are exceptions. There is something he likes about American TV, something worth his time.

``I do quite enjoy `Seinfeld' '' he says with a chuckle. ``Sometimes it is really funny.''

An eight-hour whirlwind tour of art via `American Visions'

Here is a preview of Robert Hughes' ``American Visions,'' which begins tonight on KCET (Channel 28).

Part I, ``Republic of Virtue'': The series opens with Hughes casting a cynical eye at the Greco-Roman ``architecture'' at Caesars Palace, and leading viewers through an overview of American idealism, with a loving look at Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and painters John Singleton Copley and Thomas Cole.

Part II, ``The Promised Land'': From the Pilgrims to American Indians, Hughes examines faith and its role in creation of a new land and new art forms. Visits to the oldest church in America, early adobes and the Plymouth Colony.

Parts I and II air together tonight from 9 to 11 p.m.

Part III, ``Wilderness and the West'': Hughes studies the influence of landscape and the Wild West on American art, from the Hudson River School to Frederic Remington and Mount Rushmore. ``Nature, not culture, is what made Americans Americans,'' he proclaims.

Part IV, ``The Gilded Age:'' Hughes uses Winslow Homer, the Brooklyn Bridge, John Singer Sargent, Whistler, Beaux Arts mansions and others to illustrate the booming and uniquely American style in art and architecture.

Parts III and IV air together June 4 from 9 to 11 p.m.

Part V, ``The Wave From the Atlantic'': With the Statue of Liberty looming large, Hughes examines the impact of the wave of immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century on American art. He looks at the Armory Show of 1913, silent movies and the beginnings of modern art.

Part VI, ``Streamlines and Breadlines'': As the frontier disappears, Hughes mixes skyscrapers, art deco, the Hoover Dam, Jacob Lawrence, Edward Hopper, groovy cigarette lighters, slick toasters and that infamous painting, ``American Gothic.'' Somehow, it all flows together.

Parts V and VI air together June 11 from 9 to 11 p.m.

Part VII, ``Empire of Signs:'' Jackson Pollack, the automobiles of the '30s and '40s, the Cold War, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning and finally Andy Warhol, whose place in art history Hughes explains thus: ``You didn't need to be hot and earnest anymore, you could be super cool like a slightly frosted mirror.''

Part VIII, ``The Age of Anxiety'': Opens with the haunted face of an American soldier in Vietnam and traces changes in art as political ideals shatter. Includes footage of Ed Kienholz's burial, a visit to Simi Valley's Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and an interview with Jeff Koons, who remains polite despite Hughes' obvious disdain for his work.

Parts VII and VIII air together June 18 from 9 to 11 p.m.

CAPTION(S):

9 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `VISION' QUEST

Robert Hughes criscrosses the country for his PBS special on American art

Gene Blevins/Daily News

(2--Cover--Color) GRANT WOODS' `AMERICAN GOTHIC'

(3--Color) The Chrysler Building

(4--Color) The Cross River Album Quilt, created in 1861 by Mrs. Eldad Miller and others in Cross River, N.Y.

(5--Color) Australian-turned-New Yorker Robert Hughes criss-crossed the country to make the eight-part series ``American Visions.''

(6--Color) ``Nighthawks,'' by Edward Hopper, who is examined in Part VI, ``Streamlines and Breadlines.''

(7--Color) ``Marilyn,'' by Andy Warhol. Hughes covers the pop-art purveyor in Part VII, ``Empire of Signs.''

(8--Color) J. Cornell's ``The Hotel Eden''

(9--Color) ``The Razor'' (1924) by Gerald Murphy

Box: An eight-hour whirlwind tour of art via `American Visions'