An Amusement Between Verses – the Art of Victor Hugo
Town with tumbledown bridge, 1847; pen, brown-ink wash, black crayon, watercolour and stencil on vellum paper, partly scraped (137 x 209 mm)In France, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is by some considered the greatest French poet. To the rest of the world, he is most well-known for his novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
But he was in fact also a great artist. It was many years ago now that I discovered this by chance: I was in a suburban department store, accompanying my sister while she shopped, and picked up a catalogue of his works on paper in the books department. I had never seen his drawings, and he was an equally serendipitous discovery for my then-boyfriend, who was not only an artist himself, but a collector. We were both thrilled by the delicate beauty and sheer breadth of Hugo’s graphic work (numbering nearly 3000 items).
The book, Shadows of a Hand – The Drawings of Victor Hugo, accompanied an exhibition of the same name that was held at The Drawing Centre, New York, from April 16–June 13, 1998.
Hugo worked mainly in ink, but he was known to import all sorts of bizarre matter into his drawings. Often he employed many mediums at once, and rubbed and scraped back the surface. The resulting drawings have an exciting texture and depth. Hugo writes to Baudelaire, on April 29, 1860:
“I’m very happy and very proud that you should choose to think kindly of what I call my pen-and-ink drawings. I’ve ended up mixing in pencil, charcoal, sepia, coal dust, soot and all sorts of bizarre concoctions which manage to convey more or less what I have in view, and above all in mind. It keeps me amused between two verses.”
Castle lit up in the night, 1856; pen, brown-ink wash and black ink over rubbed charcoal on laid paper (138 x 188 mm)Hugo’s drawing techniques were extremely unusual. One of the fullest accounts is by his son, Charles Hugo:
“Once paper, pen and ink-well have been brought to the table, Victor Hugo sits down and without making a preliminary sketch, without any apparent preconception, sets about drawing with an extraordinarily sure hand not the landscape as a whole but any old detail. He will begin his forest with the branch of a tree, his town with a gable, his gable with a weather vane, and, little by little, the entire composition will emerge from the blank paper with the precision and clarity of a photographic negative subjected to the chemical preparation that brings out the picture. That done, the draftsman will ask for a cup and will finish off his landscape with a light shower of black coffee. The result is an unexpected and powerful drawing that is often strange, always personal, and recalls the etchings of Rembrandt and Piranesi.”
I find his drawings so atmospheric they also bring to mind the painter William Turner.
Sunset by the sea, c. 1852–55; grey-ink wash and stencil on grey-tinted paper (86 x 231 mm)
Cloud over a field, c. 1854–56?; brush and brown-ink wash on beige paper (215 x 284 mm)
Steeple taches, c. 1856?; Brown- and blue-ink wash with highlights of white gouache on beige paper (80 x 80 mm)Apart from ink washes, Hugo also experimented with ink taches (ink blots which are manipulated with excess water, smearing and smudging); pliages (symmetrical taches, formed by folding the paper); lace impressions (applying ink-soaked lace –often metallic, ie, wired – to paper); and stencils and cut-outs (combined with other drawing techniques and mediums).
Chandelier, c. 1850; pen and brown-ink wash on a verso of a letter folded down the middle (262 x 205 mm)
Heraldic eagle, c. 1855; cut-out made from black, laid paper and mounted on vellum (195 x 133 mm)
Study for an eagle for a coat of arms, c. 1855; soft charcoal, stencil, pen, brown-ink wash, black ink, blue ink and application of lace on vellum paper (297 x 229 mm)
”… little by little, the entire composition will emerge from the blank paper with the precision and clarity of a photographic negative …”
– Charles Hugo
Also a statesman and human rights activist, Hugo was exiled in 1851, after declaring Napoleon III a traitor to France. Much of Hugo’s work that he produced after this time is ‘distinguished either by their large formats, or by the use of mixed media in which reliance of chance is increasingly frequent’. His new trust in the occult lead to experimental ‘spirit-drawings’ made with table-turning, but other themes included the ocean; space, and the unkown; and dream-like, elusive reveries on nature.
It was difficult to choose my favourites from the book, but here is a small selection from some of these categories. Scroll down for more, and be inspired. (Click images for larger versions.)
Lace impressions, c. late 1855; two lace impressions in a single frame: (left) application of lace soaked in brown ink, rubbed charcoal and highlights of brown ink on cream paper (220 x 95 mm), (right) application of lace soaked in brown-ink wash, on blue paper (280 x 105 mm)
’Old city‘ calling card, 1856; pen, brown-ink wash, applications of lace soaked in brown and black ink wash with highlights of red and gold gouache on bluish laid paper
Mushroom, c. 1850; pen, brown-ink wash, black ink, black crayon, charcoal, gouache, watercolour, fingerprints, reserves and stencil on paper, partly scraped and rubbed (474 x 608 mm)
Renaissance architecture; Pen, brown-ink wash, black ink, gouache, graphite, black crayon, fingerprints and stencils (?) on vellum paper, partly rubbed (208 x 244 mm)
Ruined aqueduct, c 1850; pen, brown-ink wash, black ink, graphite, black crayon, fingerprints and reserves on beige, gilt-edged vellum paper, partly rubbed [taches on verso], (249 x 329 mm)
Sokolsky’s Bubbles
Over New York (New Jersey), 1963On Thursday at the theatre I was picture researching, preparing to present a concept for a photo shoot when I came across an intriguing photograph of a man inside a balloon, next to a girl on a couch. How did they do that, Amelia-Jane and I wondered. “Photoshop,” Amelia-Jane pronounced.
“Maybe,” I replied, “but I can show you some amazing 1960s fashion pictures of a girl in a bubble that was all done the old-fashioned way.”
On the Seine, 1963By Melvin Sokolsky, the photographs are taken in 1963, mostly around Paris (and some in New York) with the model Simone d’Allencourt. She floats in a bubble above the Seine, the streets of Paris, in the snowy forest; above the bemused and amused faces of ordinary Parisians. The images are absolutely awe-inspiring, and even more fantastic to know that absolutely no computer was employed to achieve these wonders.
She floats in a bubble above the Seine, the streets of Paris, in the snowy forest …
Bicycle Street, 1963
In Trees, 1963Years ago I stumbled upon a monograph on his work, which I didn’t buy because it was very expensive. It is now out of print and used books are double the price! Then a few weeks ago I discovered the Sokolsky iPhone book app, which I promptly purchased for only a few dollars. It is beautiful to look at, but now I want an iPad to fully appreciate the pictures.
Detail of ’The Garden of Earthly Delights‘, by Hieronymous Bosch, 1510-15Fascinatingly, I read that Sokolsky was inspired by a most unlikely source – a Renaissance painting (left). Here’s what the photographer says about it:
"On my 14th birthday, my father took me to a bookstore and told me I could choose any book in the store. I came upon a book of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and found myself spellbound by the detail of a man and a woman in a veined caul-like bubble growing from a strange plant. That image in the The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510-15) had a profound effect on me – it resulted in a recurring dream of seeing myself in a bubble floating across exotic landscapes."
I can imagine quite looking forward to going to bed as a child if I was going to have dreams like that!
Scroll down for more images, and click for larger versions.
With Chair, 1963
After Delvaux, 1963
Du Taxi, 1963
Le Dragon, 1963
Mr Snippy
Marni, Vogue Nippon, Jul 2001
I first came across Michael Roberts’ illustrations in French Vogue, years and years ago. I had long lamented that the art of fashion illustration was all but extinct, and it’s been great to slowly see it come back in the last few years.
This book by Michael Roberts was actually published in 2005, but it was difficult to find at a reasonable price (if not impossible) in Melbourne; I finally bought it secondhand through Abebooks only a few months ago.
Prada, Vogue Nippon, Jul 2001
Although Roberts also works in other media (ink, watercolour, pencil), it is his collage paper cutouts that I find awesome. At first sight, one is taken with the wonderful medium – unusual today, but reminiscent of Matisse’s paper cutouts – and then the sense of humour and joie de vivre. There are mosaics, Bridget Riley style op-art effects, 30s style repeat patterns and great evocations of New York that recall the Jazz Age. And then too they exhibit such astonishing manual dexterity that one can only marvel and admire Roberts’ skill and patience. Amazing.
Scroll down for more images; click for larger versions. (Apologies, some of these have been trimmed as the book was too large for my scanner.)
Miu Miu, Vogue Nippon, Dec 2000
Miu Miu, Vogue Nippon, Dec 2000
No credit listed
Oliver by Valentino, L’Uomo Vogue, May 2000
Miu Miu, Prada, Manolo Blahnik, Ferragamo, Jil Sander, Vogue Nippon, Dec 2000
Yves Saint Laurent, The Telegraph Magazine, Sept 2005
Yearning to Breathe Free, The New Yorker cover, Sept 2001
Breaking Out in Spots, The New Yorker cover try, Mar 2001
Moroccan Leather (With a Little M)
A clever inlay for Einstein’s ‘The Meaning of Relativity’Well, since I am actually in Morocco right now, it seems appropriate to talk about moroccan books. That little ‘m’ there is deliberate. But more on that in a moment.
Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ Leather has for centuries been the traditional material used in bookbinding: it’s easy to work with – stretching and cutting easily; it absorbs dye; and is beautiful in its own right, adding to the aesthetic appeal of the book as an object.
Although there are inherent problems to using this material – susceptibility to extreme temperatures, moisture, humidity, light – leather is today still often the binder’s choice for fine jobs. (Late last year I saw a fascinating exhibition of modern leather-bound books at the Queensland State Library.)
Rosas: Roses Real and Imaginary. With Poems. By Susan AllixThe most traditional leather bindings are sheep, roan (a thinner, cheaper sheep leather), calf and goat. It is goat leather specifically that is called ‘morocco’.
Inlaid leather is a style of binding decoration that often resembles a mosaic or quilt. Pieces of pre-cut leather are inserted into an existing leather binding to create a pattern or design; nature scenes; floral decorations; and even portraits of people. Some of these bookbindings are so intricate it is a fine testament to the skill, steady hand and patience of their craftsmen.
Perhaps I will look for some in the souqs of Fez today, although from the fact that the rare books pictured here cost thousands of dollars, I think I could only afford a tattered vintage volume!
‘Innocence in Extremis’, by John Hawkes
‘Wrenching Times. Poems from Drum-Taps’ by Walt Whitman
Fresh-Faced First Editions
‘First Term at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1946; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd
I can’t remember how old I was the first time I read Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, but I do recall how I loved them. My hopes were dashed too when one of my older sisters explained that this was a fictional school (and on another continent besides).
Stumbling upon The Enid Blyton Society, I was delighted to find scans of covers of the first and second editions. I love the style of these 50s and 60s illustrations: they look just so fresh and innocent, with a colour palette typical of the era. They're perfect for depicting the adventures of these young English schoolgirls.
‘The Second Form at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1947; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd
‘Third Year at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1948; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd
they look just so fresh and innocent, with a colour palette typical of the [50s and 60s] era
They make me feel so nostalgic, not, ahem, because I am so old, but because I was so young when I first read them, possibly even before I started high school myself. I love the smell and feel of old books like these, they remind me of childhood summers when I ran around barefoot, of warm, scented breezes and the thrill of holidays yawning ahead of me, with so much time to devour books.
‘Upper Fourth at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1949; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd
‘In the Fifth at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1950; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd
The illustrator’s name was Stanley Lloyd, and he created the covers for all the first editions of the Malory Towers series, although he was also active in the field of pony book illustration – not a genre I was ever interested in when I was a child. He began his career illustrating for magazines, and wrote two books himself, but it is these particular illustrations for Enid Blyton for which he is most well-known. If you have a spare few hundred dollars you can even buy a first edition on Abebooks.
‘Last Term at Malory Towers’, by Enid Blyton, 1951; cover illustration by Stanley Lloyd