There was little that fin-de-siècle artist Aubrey Beardsley's famous gold-nibbed pen could not illustrate--drawings, posters, bookbindings. Though he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, he left an enormous body of work behind that found a willing audience during his lifetime in the more outré circles of the "naughty '90s" and now symbolizes the decadence of the 1890s. Beardsley possessed an astonishing range of expression, but he is perhaps most famous for his outrageous erotic drawings--many of which adorned such artistic magazines as the Savoy and the Yellow Book. He pushed public opinion to the limit with his sequence of graphic illustrations for Aristophanes's Lysistrata, which, deemed obscene, remained unpublished until 1966.

Biographer Stephen Calloway curated the centenary exhibition of Beardsley's work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London during autumn of 1998. He closely scrutinizes Beardsley's life in the light of his subversive drawings in this in-depth, superbly illustrated biography that coincides with the exhibition.

The New York Times Book Review, Sarah Harrison Smith
...a judicious and handsome critical study...

The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
Mr. Calloway quotes one Chris Snodgrass--"Beardsley's stylized irony recuperates the dislocations it reveals, serving to reinforce the anesthetizing effects of his harmonizing aesthetic techniques, adding another veneer of 'style' to distance and mitigate the dissonant metaphysical implications his works expose." Mr. Calloway then promises not to undertake a similar approach--to the great relief of any sensible reader--and keeps his word with contemporary sources for the facts of Beardsley's career and a minimum of speculation on possible reasons for the artist's addiction to the sexually ambiguous and the subtly subversive. A precocious success at twenty, dead of tuberculosis at twenty-five, Beardsley was, quite simply, like nobody else in his control of line and his use of black and white space, as the book's illustrations prove. One can only wish there were more of them.

Language Notes
Text: German

ANNOTATION

Calloway portrays the notorious illustrator.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was the most notorious illustrator of his day. This book, published to commemorate the centenary of his tragically early death at the age of twenty-five, tells the story of his extraordinary life and brief, hectic career. Beardsley's distinctive body of work is considered alongside that of his contemporaries and friends, among them Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler, Max Beerbohm, Edward Burne-Jones, and W.B. Yeats, and set against the vibrant and often racy artistic, literary, and social world of 1890s London. Beardsley's startling designs are reproduced here from original drawings and from rare early editions of the books and magazines he illustrated. Also included are examples of his innovative prints, posters, and bookbindings, along with a gallery of portraits and photographs of Wilde, Yeats, and other celebrated figures in Beardsley's circle. The authoritative text is the first to fully explore the precocious young artist's diverse influences, which range from ancient Greek vase paintings to erotic Japanese ukiyo-e prints and European Old Master paintings by Mantegna, Watteau, and Botticelli.

FROM THE CRITICS

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