Hugo et l'architecture. De la pierre à la plume

Following "Hugo décorateur" currently presented at the Maison de Victor Hugo, this exhibition explores the links between Victor Hugo and architecture, highlighting how it unfolds in his literary and graphic work.

A romantic writer, accomplished playwright, committed poet, visionary artist, and decorator, Victor Hugo maintained a privileged and essential relationship with architecture, which always profoundly inspired him.

Churches, cathedrals, and castles filled his notebooks and gave meaning to his stories.

Following the example of the first half of the 19th century, where literature and architecture were closely associated and the question of heritage became central, the poet positioned himself as an ardent defender of heritage after his famous plea "Guerre aux démolisseurs" in 1825.

His most celebrated work on this subject remains, of course, the novel Notre-Dame de Paris, a true aesthetic manifesto published in 1831, in which he developed his particular conception of architecture where the cathedral, a grandiose monument, refers as much to history as to writing.

In the famous chapter "Ceci tuera cela" (This will kill that), the writer draws an analogy between stones and words. Both building materials, literature is an architecture of words just as architecture is a writing of history.

This presence of architecture is found in other novels, with a significant place given to the edifices that structure and punctuate the narrative. This interest in architectural motifs also permeates all his graphic work.

Castles and keeps, ruins and roadways, churches and cathedrals, fortresses and staircases… very early on formed the main iconography of his sketchbooks and drawings.

Victor Hugo's sense of observation and imagination unfold through real or dreamed monuments, famous or intimate, precise or visionary, immense and tiny, grandiose or modest.

This approach also concerns a personal architecture at Hauteville House, his home during exile in Guernsey, where he experimented with a three-dimensional architectural vision.