Outrepasser Hugo

Abstract: This article focuses on Arnulf Rainer's Overpaintings of Victor Hugo's drawings and explores the complex interplay of the act of overpainting with the question of identity and transgression. It examines how Rainer's layered brushstrokes over Hugo's drawings, as well as his additions—splashes of color, lines, and letters—, create a passage or dialogue with Hugo's visions, blurring the boundaries between reverence and transgression, and between past and present, reconsidering them from new perspectives. What new resonances has Hugo's work found? Drawing on Derrida's analysis of the signature and the experience of the trait , the article further analyzes Hugo and Rainer's plays on initials and questions the assumption that the signature is merely a mark in the drawing. Instead, it explores how the initials that sign the drawings operate and the meaningful relationship between the two juxtaposed signatures. This article also illuminates how, through the art of Hugo, Rainer's œuvre comes to embody a relentless quest to redefine the act of painting, transforming it into a continuous, dynamic process of self-reinvention and boundary-pushing, challenging viewers to engage deeply with the evolving nature of the artistic gesture.