I am fascinated by the art of Victor Hugo, recently seen at the RA. Here is a link to my essay on his work and that of Alexander Cozens. Modern Art is Over: Embrace Deep Art

There is also an article about his work in the New Statesman.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/art-design/2022/01/the-sinister-art-of-victor-hugo

I don’t see Hugo’s work as “modern art”. The first use I can find of the word “modern”, applied to a creative act, is George Meredith’s brilliant sequence of sonnets – “Modern Love”.

This is a sequence of fifty 16-line sonnets about the failure of a marriage, an episodic verse narrative that has been described as “a novella in verse”. It first appeared in 1862. I get the sense that it was Meredith’s intention to bring love “up to date”. This notion has persisted. Modern art is up to date – it’s the latest thing, and it always has been. Neither Cozens nor Hugo seem to have been interested in being up to date. If anything their work is nostalgic, harking back to a more gothic age, a romantic notion that had already faded.

The trouble is, today, being up to date is in itself dated. Modern art has simply come to mean trendy art; more aligned to the world of fashion than to artistic aspiration. Today, genuine originality will often seem unfashionable, out on its own bizarre limb.

And this is precisely why deep art appeals to me.