So I'm in a lousy mood. It's one of those lousy moods that starts out as a vague discoloration, then reveals itself to be as slimy and intractable as mildew. I've been sitting here looking at Victor Hugo's ink-blot drawings from the 1850s and 1860s, trying to inexpensively psychoanalyze myself. Here, you can try this, too, just stare at this one until something jumps out at you:
Yeah. I'm not playing fair. There are ACTUAL LITTLE FACES in this drawing; they aren't even open for negotiation. Really, Rosarch doesn't come along for another 80 years. Hugo believed his work to be more spiritually (as in the spirit world) than pyschologically inspired. He dabbed, he blotted, he folded, he pondered, and then he embellished, drawing over his automatic drawings to hint at what might be haunting them. Though sometimes they weren't haunted at all; they simply turned into mushrooms or castles or mountains. In each case, they are brilliant representational accidents, and fantastically prognosticatory abstractions. Looking at them almost puts me in a better mood. I've got "Shadows of a Hand," the catalog to the traveling exhibit of his drawings at Soho's Drawing Center in 1998; you can find some of his drawings on the web, including here
9:21:45 PM 
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