The Royal Academy’s newest exhibition, Astonishing Issues: The Drawings of Victor Hugo gives an extraordinary glimpse into the darkish and moody global of the famend author best possible identified for his novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.
The exhibition is ready in exceptionally low lights, a vital measure to maintain the delicate drawings, that are typically simplest obtainable beneath archival prerequisites. This dim atmosphere complements the foreboding environment of Hugo’s works, that are ceaselessly landscapes that includes cathedrals that seem to be in wreck or rising from mist or mud clouds.
Those drawings are harking back to Dennis Creffield’s gestural, vigorous and darkish, cathedral sketches. Hugo’s are an identical, however a lot smaller and with a extra post-apocalyptic and surreal twist.
Titles like The Useless Town attest to this, whilst Breakwater on Jersey, with its difficult to understand imagery that recollects taking a look up a steep incline in opposition to some towers, inspires a way of Gothic horror, harking back to Dracula.
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Different drawings within the exhibition are extra surreal. One includes a massive mushroom with a face looming over a desolate panorama, eerily evoking nuclear struggle (one thing that Hugo may just no longer have in all probability fathomed in 1850). Windmill at the Roof of a Farmhouse depicts a windmill improbably rising from every other construction, including to the surreal high quality of Hugo’s paintings. And, one of the most first drawings guests stumble upon is of a toxic tree with a cranium rising from its shadow, atmosphere the tone for the exhibition.
The Serpent resembles a Chinese language dragon twisting throughout the sky over the ocean with a mountain obscured in mist beneath its fire-breathing jaws. The sunshine specifications illuminating the water upload to the thriller, as the sunshine supply itself stays unclear. Is the sunshine emanating from the dragon’s mouth or from at the back of the mountain? This ambiguity provides to the surreal high quality of the paintings.
Victor Hugo, Mushroom, 1850.
CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo
The Bowels of Leviathan is likely one of the biggest and maximum summary items within the exhibition. Free brushwork, in all probability created with a big brush or feather (as recommended via the wall textual content) fills the skin. Vertical strains look like jail bars in a dismal arch (one of the allusions to Les Misérables within the exhibition), whilst the identify in reality refers back to the Parisian sewers – a habitual theme in Hugo’s novel.
A number of drawings within the exhibition can also be interpreted as metaphors for political turmoil. Lighthouse at Casquets, Guernsey includes a closely tilting send, whilst Boat with out Sails depicts what seems to be a unmarried piece of picket from a boat smash, or possibly a raft afloat.
Send in a Typhoon additional emphasises the theme of stormy waters, reflecting the turbulent political panorama of Hugo’s time. His father used to be a normal within the Napoleonic empire, which crumbled when Victor used to be 12. He noticed the Bourbon monarchy restored, then the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Now not just a witness, Hugo used to be deeply excited about politics, leading to his exile to the Chanel Islands, the place he made many of the drawings on show, all over the reign of Napoleon III.
Victor Hugo, The Lighthouse at Casquets, Guernsey, 1866.
CCØ Paris Musées / Maison de Victor Hugo
The Durande Send After Sinking and The Spoil are located on both sides of Octopus, a fantastical depiction of what lies underneath the stormy seas. Or possibly lifestyles after the typhoon, unusual and different worldly. There are two variations of Octopus on show, either one of which might no longer glance misplaced as illustrations for a H.P. Lovecraft novel. Those items recommend a unusual and otherworldly lifestyles after turmoil and the sense of uncertainty feels oddly provide these days.
Hugo’s use of lace imprints and collage, akin to postage stamps, used to be avant-garde for his time. He mixed charcoal, pen, brown ink and wash, gouache, graphite, and extra, showcasing his experimental option to artwork. Compositionally, those works are subtle and are living as much as Van Gogh’s description of them as “astonishing things”.
Astonishing Issues: The Drawings of Victor Hugo on the Royal Academy is a fascinating exhibition that provides an extraordinary alternative to enjoy the darkish and surreal global of one in all historical past’s maximum celebrated writers and artists. The exhibition is a must-see for artwork fanatics and lovers of Victor Hugo alike.
Astonishing Issues: The Drawings of Victor Hugo is on on the Royal Academy, London till June 29 2025.
