La muerte de Victor Hugoordenación y análisis crítico reflexivo de las fuentes gráfico documentales y plásticas dedicadas a la defunción, velatorio y funeral público del poeta

Abstract

This doctoral thesis proposes in its practical theoretical development to select, analyze and order, critically, the scattered graphic documentary and plastic sources that, between May 22 and June 1, 1885, recorded in detail the death, the wake and the public funeral dedicated to Victor Hugo. All this under the ideological premise that this representational archive is a paradigmatic example of journalistic art and illustrations generated at the end of the 19th century, committed to the theme of the social; at the time of being a faithful reflection of the contemporary position in the face of death, the culture and the history of its present. The two main blocks into which this study is divided, «First act: from the portrait to the graphic documentation carried out between May 22 and 30» and «Second act: the funeral of Victor Hugo», provide a conceptual vision of the death, as a subject, and of the compositions exhibited on that subject; of the plastic execution modes to make them; of the technical identification strategies of the authors in the face of such a fact and of their thinking in the face of the creative act; as well as the relationship of the generated object with its own context. A context that normalizes and legitimizes, in its new freedom, the dissemination and extension of the post-mortem portrait; as well as the graphic transcription of any ritual related to the mortuary. In this sense, the research proposes an argued route, following temporal parameters, addressing from the first moments of the poet's death to the deposit of his body in his grave. What has as a consequence that the story begins with the portrait of the writer on his deathbed and culminates with the arrival of his corpse to the Pantheon, passing in his narrative description through the multiple micro-histories that formalize this event. Thus, in its organization and internal decoding, a record is left, through the chosen works, of the deceased, of the room in which the deceased is found after his death, of the ornament that surrounds him in the family wake, of the clothing that they covered his body after the event, of the relatives and friends who assisted him, of the inhabitants of Paris who crowded at the doors of his home in search of news -at the time of paying tribute-, of the feelings of the common citizen in his universal anxiety (in his desire for knowledge), of the public wake in all its stadiums, of the design and decoration that is displayed for it in monuments and streets, of the vigil at the Arc de Triomphe as the first popular reception area, of the speeches preceding transfer of the body on the way to the tomb, of the entire funeral procession that accompanies it through the streets of the capital towards the Pantheon, of the actions of the people in the face of such an extraordinary event ... etc. A whole documentary plastic journey that, dissected in the different chapters in which this research is organized, attest that it is the product of the reflexive connection and hybridization of the sculptural language with the pictorial and photographic. And that is the consequence of the interest of an important team of executors such as: Jule Dalou, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (Nadar), Léon-Joseph Bonnat, Alexandre Falguière, León Glaize, Désiré-François Laugée, Georges Jules Victor Clairin, Leopold Flameng, Samuel Urrabieta, Francesco Saverio Altamura, Henri-Cimarosa Godefroy, Alfred-Nicolas Normand, Antonin Neurdein, Léon et Lévy, Auguste Gérardin, Eduardo Schiaffino, Gabriel Edouard Thurner, Georges Francois Guiaud, Jean Béraud, Edouard Michel-Lançon, Pierre-Henri Mayeux, Louis Hayet, Alfred Philippe Roll, Eugène Chéron, Pierre Emonds, Hosui Yamamoto, Edmond Lachenal, Pierre Philippe Lampué, Jean-Paul Sinibaldi, etc. A general panorama that specifies the significant impact that the death of Victor Hugo had both in the field of art and in that of society, culture and politics. Being evidenced, therefore, that the entire documentary and artistic process dispensed, at the same time, ceases to be a marginal issue to be a specific and transcendent issue of recent concepts of history.