By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

No one is likely to accuse TIME art critic Robert Hughes of pulling his punches. An Australian by birth, Hughes pursues his writing with a refined pugnacity that leaves no doubt as to his personal point of view. "If someone is acting like a fool or hypocrite," he says, "I think you should say so, and say why."

His targets in this week's cover story are the conservatives--notably the Republican leadership in Congress--who are trying to kill the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as public broadcasting. He attacks the subject with a polemical fire unusual even for Hughes. "Once in a while, on some issues, we give him a little more leeway, as long as it's clear that what you're getting is Bob Hughes' opinion," says assistant managing editor Christopher Porterfield, Hughes' editor since 1980. "I'm comfortable with this," he says, "because one of the secrets I've learned about Bob is that he's really a much more conscientious shirt-sleeves journalist than he likes to let on."

Hughes generally begins work at 5 a.m., climbing to a second-floor office in a barn at his Long Island, New York, home. When he needs a break, he likes to go downstairs to his carpentry shop, where he builds furniture. "I find the action of hand-planing extremely soothing," he says. "It zoids you out." After lunch he takes a long nap, a ritual he began in 1964 following a trip to Italy. "God help anybody who tries to reach me between 2 and 5 in the afternoon," he laughs.

His siestas have hardly impaired his productivity. While turning out regular culture coverage for TIME, he has managed to produce 10 books, including the best-selling Culture of Complaint (1993), and an eight-part PBS series, The Shock of the New (1980). He is completing work on an eight-hour TV special about American art, scheduled to air on BBC late next year. He can also be seen in the new documentary film Crumb, offering a critical assessment of the underground comic artist Robert Crumb.

Hughes brings to this week's story the passion and wisdom of a seasoned cultural observer who fears the U.S. may become the only developed nation without a public source of money for the arts. He says he has never met House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the force behind the Republican effort to "zero out" federal cultural funding, but relishes an imagined encounter: "I would say, 'Chairman Newt, this is not the way to renew American civilization. You are making a big mistake.'" Which, for Hughes, would be a considerable understatement.