Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below other posts featuring Aubrey Beardsley:
Art Nouveau - Part I
Art Nouveau and Symbolism of the 1890s
Introduction [1]
The art of Aubrey Beardsley is hors concours. Indeed, has not Max Beerbohm, born the same month and year, said he belongs to 'The Beardsley period'? He said that ironically, after Bearsdley had been dead for a half a century.
Note: Sir Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist. Known for his sharp wit and refined style, he captured the absurdities of the late Victorian and Edwardian literary scenes. Walter Sickert (1860–1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who helped bridge the gap between Impressionism and Modernism.
Aubrey Beardsley.
It is this paradox that makes it hard to classify Beardsley. He is modern, yet he died before Walter Sickert or Augustus John had been heard of by the general public.
His work belongs, perhaps, to that rare kind of limbo of the aesthetic atmosphere to which might be assigned the Preludes to Wagner's Operas, the pencil heads of John, the paintings of Wilem Maris or of Leonardo, some piano music of Chopin, the poetry of Keats and the Fête Champêtre of Watteau. The cold purity of their perfection seems to ban the emotion they arouse.
Portrait of Wilem Maris by Floris Arntzenius.
Like Aeschylus and Mr. Williams (renowned scholar) he has indeed "created the taste by which he is enjoyed." His art was new at the time of its making, it is still new today, although more familiar to us: he created that taste for his work that we, the onlookers, admire. His followers, or rather his imitators, have never really grasped his essential quality, namely, the cold, clear, biting line, the perfection of balance in his design, his amazing economy of beautiful detail, his daring use of black and white mass, and his unerring instinct for correct values.
That such rare and important qualities should be found altogether in one draftsman is most unusual. But they should be allied to great intelligence, a ready wit, a sardonic humour and an erotic temperament is probably unique.
It is this alliance of craftsmanship and character that makes Beardsley at once so easy and so difficult to criticize. Every drawing of his maturity gives evidence of his individual way of looking at a subject, whether it be a Victorian interior, a Greek play, an eighteenth century poem, at woman looking at some books, an early seventeenth-century satire, or an airy nothing - an armour being interred in a powder box by a pierrot and a satyr.
Besides his extreme youth and maturity, another paradox is noticeable. He was most sensitive to the zeitgeist (i.e., spirit of time) of later British Victorians. Not a foible, fashion or custom was missed by that acute mind: the Burne-Jones craze, the yellow-backed French novel, the Japanese print, the whistler nocturne and the Whistler leacock room. He saw the uproarious posters of Chéret, the poster-like lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec, the woodcuts of Charles Rickettes, the garish gaslit London streets that Jack the Ripper roamed. He heard the mot (i.e., young girl) of Oscar and the gibe of Jimmy at the critics.
Gaslit London streets that Jack the Ripper roamed.
All these, and a dozen other tricks and fancies, he observed and transmuted into his own design and made something as distinct as a Chinese bronze of the Warring States, or a modern ballet in his time by Massine.
In "Les Presages" Massine visualizes the music in his dynamic use of sculptural groupings and fluid, lyrical adagios.
The Art of Aubrey Beardsley - Part I [1]
Title: The Kiss of Judas.
Comment [1]: From the Pall Mall Magazine, July 1893. One of two drawings he made for this periodical.
Title: The Woman in the Moon, 1893.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing has little connection with the play. A caricature of Wilde in the moon.
Title: The Peacock Skirt, 1893.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing strongly influenced by the Japanese print through Whistler's Peacock Room.
Title: The Black Cape, 1893.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing has no connection with the play and is a caricature of the fashion of the period.
Title: A Platonic Lament, 1893.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. A caricature of Oscar Wilde appears in the sky.
Title: John and Salome, 1893.
Comment [1]: Intended for Salome but suppressed. It was published in later editions.
Title: Enter Herodias, 1893.
Comment [1]: For Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. First state hitherto unpublished. A caricature of Wilde in the foreground. In the original drawing the right-hand figure was nude, as here, and the artist afterwards drew a fig-leaf for the published drawing. On some proofs of the First State he wrote:
Title: The Eyes of Herod, 1893. From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894.
Comment [1]: Another drawing influenced by Whistler's Peacocok Room, and with a butterfly in the top left corner. Wilde is again caricatured.
Reference:
[1] The Best of Beardsley, R.A. Wlker, Spring Books, Great Britain (1948).
For your convenience I have listed below other posts featuring Aubrey Beardsley:
Art Nouveau - Part I
Art Nouveau and Symbolism of the 1890s
Introduction [1]
The art of Aubrey Beardsley is hors concours. Indeed, has not Max Beerbohm, born the same month and year, said he belongs to 'The Beardsley period'? He said that ironically, after Bearsdley had been dead for a half a century.
Note: Sir Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist. Known for his sharp wit and refined style, he captured the absurdities of the late Victorian and Edwardian literary scenes. Walter Sickert (1860–1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who helped bridge the gap between Impressionism and Modernism.
It is this paradox that makes it hard to classify Beardsley. He is modern, yet he died before Walter Sickert or Augustus John had been heard of by the general public.
His work belongs, perhaps, to that rare kind of limbo of the aesthetic atmosphere to which might be assigned the Preludes to Wagner's Operas, the pencil heads of John, the paintings of Wilem Maris or of Leonardo, some piano music of Chopin, the poetry of Keats and the Fête Champêtre of Watteau. The cold purity of their perfection seems to ban the emotion they arouse.
Like Aeschylus and Mr. Williams (renowned scholar) he has indeed "created the taste by which he is enjoyed." His art was new at the time of its making, it is still new today, although more familiar to us: he created that taste for his work that we, the onlookers, admire. His followers, or rather his imitators, have never really grasped his essential quality, namely, the cold, clear, biting line, the perfection of balance in his design, his amazing economy of beautiful detail, his daring use of black and white mass, and his unerring instinct for correct values.
That such rare and important qualities should be found altogether in one draftsman is most unusual. But they should be allied to great intelligence, a ready wit, a sardonic humour and an erotic temperament is probably unique.
It is this alliance of craftsmanship and character that makes Beardsley at once so easy and so difficult to criticize. Every drawing of his maturity gives evidence of his individual way of looking at a subject, whether it be a Victorian interior, a Greek play, an eighteenth century poem, at woman looking at some books, an early seventeenth-century satire, or an airy nothing - an armour being interred in a powder box by a pierrot and a satyr.
Besides his extreme youth and maturity, another paradox is noticeable. He was most sensitive to the zeitgeist (i.e., spirit of time) of later British Victorians. Not a foible, fashion or custom was missed by that acute mind: the Burne-Jones craze, the yellow-backed French novel, the Japanese print, the whistler nocturne and the Whistler leacock room. He saw the uproarious posters of Chéret, the poster-like lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec, the woodcuts of Charles Rickettes, the garish gaslit London streets that Jack the Ripper roamed. He heard the mot (i.e., young girl) of Oscar and the gibe of Jimmy at the critics.
All these, and a dozen other tricks and fancies, he observed and transmuted into his own design and made something as distinct as a Chinese bronze of the Warring States, or a modern ballet in his time by Massine.
The Art of Aubrey Beardsley - Part I [1]
Comment [1]: From the Pall Mall Magazine, July 1893. One of two drawings he made for this periodical.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing has little connection with the play. A caricature of Wilde in the moon.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing strongly influenced by the Japanese print through Whistler's Peacock Room.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. The drawing has no connection with the play and is a caricature of the fashion of the period.
Comment [1]: From Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. A caricature of Oscar Wilde appears in the sky.
Comment [1]: Intended for Salome but suppressed. It was published in later editions.
Comment [1]: For Salome by Oscar Wilde. John Lane, 1894. First state hitherto unpublished. A caricature of Wilde in the foreground. In the original drawing the right-hand figure was nude, as here, and the artist afterwards drew a fig-leaf for the published drawing. On some proofs of the First State he wrote:
'Because "on" figure was undressed
This little drawing was supressed,
It was unkind, but never mind,
Perhaps it was all for the best.
Comment [1]: Another drawing influenced by Whistler's Peacocok Room, and with a butterfly in the top left corner. Wilde is again caricatured.
Reference:
[1] The Best of Beardsley, R.A. Wlker, Spring Books, Great Britain (1948).
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