I first “met” Hilton in the summer of 1972, just before starting college, when I read his review of the great Henry Moore retrospective in Florence. I had already seen enough art writing to recognize Hilton’s prose for the breath of fresh air it was. I took away the lesson that art criticism could—and should—be engaging and individual, not just informative.

In college I read Hilton regularly, ever more avidly and closely as thoughts of a career as a critic took hold. Each piece was an education, seemingly more the work of an exceptionally literate college professor than a member of the Fourth Estate.

Soon enough, I encountered Hilton the Impaler. Having been brought up to politely overlook, rather than loudly point out, any elephants in the room, I was dumbfounded. Could one really say such things in public? But as I read Hilton more, I came to understand that his critical posture derived from something larger than contentiousness, or even, in a way, taste. To be a critic was to stoutly defend a set of aesthetic and cultural values, whatever the cost. Another lesson.

Then there was that writing. Each of Hilton’s articles was an argument, one as tautly constructed and watertight as an oceangoing vessel. Yet his prose was supple enough to limn the particulars of an artist’s style or—rare in criticism and more difficult—to unsentimentally evoke the emotion an artwork engendered. I am thinking especially of his account of a visit to Louise Nevelson’s