Born On This Day- August 21st... Artist Aubrey Beardsley

Because of my interest in Oscar Wilde, the man who would become my husband, introduced me to the work of an astonishing late 19th centurt artist. He gave me a book about Aubrey Beardsley, an English artist who was much associated with Oscar Wilde. Wilde's publisher John Lane invited Beardsley to illustrate the English edition of the play Salome. When it was published in 1894, both the play & the witty, provocative, & blatantly erotic illustrations created a sensation. That same year Beardsley became famous as the art editor of The Yellow Book, a new arts & letters periodical that Lane inaugurated. Beardsley's stunning black-and-white drawings, title-pages, & covers helped make the new quarterly a great success. The Yellow Book also quickly a target of moralists concerned about the influence of the decadent movement on English society & art. One critic described Beardsley's designs for the periodical as "diseased, weird, macbre, & sinister." Considering the shortness of his life (he died of TB at age 25), Beardsley's achievements are astonishing. A highly original creator, he transformed the art of illustration & profoundly influenced artists of his own & future generations.

His expert draftsmanship made his drawings particularly suitable to the technical advances in printing at the end of the nineteenth century. He came to maturity at a time peculiarly suited to his genius, when theories of decadence & aestheticism expression to perverse sexuality & fetishism of all kinds. Beardsley's work is sexually frank & sometimes pornographic. He drew erect penises & stylized pubic hair, & he fetishized objects such as shoes & cloths. He also depicted sexual obsession, lesbianism, sadomasochism, & male homosexuality with an honesty & passion intended to shock & provoke. Beardsley is viewed a satirical artist, with a gift for caricature & the grotesque. He also created revolutionary designs & images & patterns of surpassing beauty. His influence has been immense, & can be discerned in the stylized lines of the new Art Nouveau movement.