Along with the Irish writer and wit Oscar Wilde, whose play Salome he illustrated to astonishing effect, Aubrey Beardsley is the key figure in the English 19th Century fin-de-siecle.
In his precocious, short lived yet immeasurably influential career Beardsley started out as a follower of Aestheticism, England’s anaemic version of the international Symbolism/Decadent movement. At the age of twenty his art implicitly rejected the insipid romantic cliches of the Pre-Raphaelites, which Aestheticism was still in thrall to, and concentrated on the grotesque and the erotic. Inspired by Japanese woodblocks and the poster art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, he was one of the first artists to exploit the new process of ‘line-block’, which enabled unlimited prints to be made without losing the clarity of the original drawing. Beardsley’s most important contribution to the history of drawing was, however, the value he attached to line. Beardsley noted that artists “are in the habit of using thin lines to express backgrounds, and thick lines to express foregrounds.” His simple yet revolutionary idea was that he could achieve a greater effect if “the background and foreground are drawn with lines the same thickness.” The importance of Beardsley on the sinuous curve of the then nascent Art Nouveau style is hard to over-estimate.
Beardsley’s first commission in 1893, at the age of twenty-one, for the Everyman edition of Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur caused quite a stir with its languid atmosphere of androgyny and perversion. He was a co-founder of The Savoy magazine, where parts of his unfinished erotic novel Under the Hill (with illustrations) were published, and the first art editor of TheYellow Book. Beardsley is credited with the distinctive yellow cover, daringly associating it with the tradition of bounding illicit, pornographic books in that colour in France. Along with the illustrations for Salome, this would prove to be problematic for Beardsley at the time of Wilde’s trial for gross indecency in 1895 and the publishers of The Yellow Book gave in to demands for his dismissal.
Beardsley would continue to illustrate books, notably Lysistrata, Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and selected tales of Edgar Allan Poe, before moving to the South of France in 1897 due to his deteriorating health. He died the following year at the age of 25 from tuberculosis.
Wow he was only 25? An impressive body of interesting (and scary!) work! I have the Lady of the Lake plate in one of my King Arthur collections 🙂
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Yes he was very precocious, plus the fact that he was ill for quite a long time probably added to his urgency. Interesting, grotesque yet innovative. Thanks Christine. I like the Arthurian legends myself as well
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The work has a definite urgency to it.
Between Arthur and Alice, you cannot go wrong! 🙂
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You can’t you have good taste Christine
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good post
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Thank you.
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Oh, now these images are dark but full of vibrancy. I love them. They don’t look sinister
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Thank you Daisy. I agree, grotesque but not sinister. He cerrtainly packed a lot in in a very short life
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Indeed. 😊
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One of my favorite artists of all time. Great post.
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Thank you glad you enjoyed
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nice post
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Thank you
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This is a post to catch a cloud… Love it. *
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Thank you Aubrey liked his line.
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Hmm?
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The artist… he liked his line. Please try and keep up.
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I’ll try to, sorry Mr Cake.
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I will forgive you, this time. I expect everyone to pay attention in class!
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=D *chuckle* Oh so sorry again, Mr Caaaaake
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It is OK, you are forgiven.
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Really!? *enooooormous grin*
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But I am keeping my eye for any inattention and slacking
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What interested me is how he chose to abandon the status quo and create his own line…cool
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It is cool, you have to prepared to go your own way if you want to achieve the extraordinary.
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I actually find the idea with the thin and thick lines rather intriguing! Tried that out yesterday coincidentally… With a random line draw I’ll post soon or less… Hehe. Cheers, Cake.
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Ah please do send it to me… glad I lead you to experiment!
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Ah, it is only faintly connected to the subject presented here…
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Oh but I still what to see very much.
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And you may see it in my latest post…
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Admire the King Arthur piece. Was never a great fan of Beardsley, no particular reason, maybe because I prefer works in color. But sad about his young age.
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I like Beardsley, though he wouldn’t be one of my absolute favourites, plus he is important in reference to Symbolism and Decadence. I like black and white drawings as well as colour. Must be my gloomy nature.
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I think it’s less just the dark tones. It’s more of his style that leaves me cold. it’s decorative but the 2-dimensionality doesn’t have the depth and shading I love with B/W…
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It is decorative, a fate he shared with Klimt, another Decadent who was quickly appropriated by the bourgeois, as was all Art Nouveau.
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yes. true. I like Klimt more. but the commoditization of him killed it for me.
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I like Klimt as well but he has definitely been co-opted. Amazing how the avant garde of yesterday can become the chintz of today.
Here is my post on Klint, I also did one on Schiele….hard to talk about one and not the other.
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interesting, i was just talking to someone about art the frustration when people don’t like what you do, but realizing how few artists or no will be equally liked by everyone…
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Nobody can ever be liked by everyone, and even if someone did approach that level of universality then people would be even more critical, because of human nature.
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yes. who are your favorite artists?
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Ah that is a hard question…Man Ray, Max Ernst, Bosch, Caravaggio, Richter, Durer, Toyen, Hokusai, Grosz. I like a lot of Art Brut. And lots of individual works by artists. Munch as well.
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Good taste.
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Thank you kindly.
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These remind me very much of another illustrator, Harry Clarke, who came a little later – the 1920’s. I’m sure you know who I mean. His illustrations for Poe and for Goethe are very much in this same style. Beardsley must have been an influence. I absolutely love this sort of work.
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Clarke was definitely influenced by Beardsley and Art Nouveau, which were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and the whole William Morris thing.
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