"Salome". Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play
Twenty years of research into the works of the British artist and travels around the world - and Professor of English at Morehouse College in Atlanta Linda Gertner Zatlin presents in the United States the two-volume edition of Aubrey Beardsley: A Systematized Catalog.
The theme of the study is that although Beardsley is widely known for his explicit depictions of erotic and physiological fantasies, he is much more universal than is commonly believed, Dr. Zatlin argues. And by discovering facts and new information about the illustrations, she proves this thesis.
Aubrey Beardsley. Climax. Illustration for Oscar Wilde's play "Salome"
Climax. Illustration for Oscar Wilde's play "Salome". 1893
“The artist’s father, Vincent, worked in the office of a London brewery, and his mother was a governess who taught French and piano. The family constantly wandered from one furnished room to another...” - updated details of Beardsley’s biography are presented in a two-volume edition. The author traveled around countries, checking and comparing facts, worked in archives and studied documents from private collections.
Aubrey Beardsley (1872 - 1898) realized at an early age that he had a short life ahead of him. The boy was only seven years old when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1879. He began drawing at about the same age, and, trying to find out more about his illness, he reviewed a lot of medical literature with anatomical details... The boy studied at a boarding school - his sketches of classmates, made on personalized cards as a gift to friends, were preserved. He illustrated programs for school theater productions and for home performances, which he performed with his sister Mabel. By the way, even then he began to earn money with his art, receiving orders.
Aubrey Beardsley. Self-portrait
After graduating from high school, Beardsley studied art while working as a clerk for surveyors and insurance agents. By the age of 20, he was already a famous artist, a friend of Oscar Wilde. Tuberculosis hemorrhages at that time put him out of action for months. Beardsley described himself as "disgustingly built, stooped and with a shuffling gait, a sallow face, sunken eyes and long red hair." In his later years he begged his publisher to destroy the “indecent” drawings, and in the year of his death Beardsley wrote to a friend that he regretted not being able to complete the “beautiful things” he wanted.
Flutist from Gammeln. Illustration for the school play program
Aubrey Beardsley. 1888
Aubrey Beardsley, "The Toilet of Salome II" (1893)
Aubrey Beardsley, "The Toilet of Salome I" (1893)
Linda Gertner Zatlin has counted about 400 original works by Beardsley that are now lost, but are mentioned in documents or preserved in reproductions.
Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde at Work
Aubrey Beardsley, cover of Savoy magazine
“Dr. Zatlin also identified many fakes. At least one of Beardsley’s friends made and sold fakes even during the artist’s lifetime...”
Beardsley was also a freelance magazine illustrator, providing illustrations for Wilde's writings, Arthurian legends, Greek dramas and 18th-century witticisms. He painted portraits, designed posters and even... sewing machines. From time to time the artist depicted hermaphrodites and freaks. As an editor noted in 1895, Beardsley was "passionate about surprising the public with something unexpected."
Aubrey Beardsley, "Platonic Lamentation" (1893)
He was treated with mercury and antimony and died at the age of 26 on the French Riviera in the arms of his mother and sister.
In her catalog, Linda Gertner Zatlin corrected many errors that litter the artist's biographies. Even his mother Ellen made mistakes when talking about her son’s life and work. Little about his work is reflected in the correspondence. “It’s so impenetrable...” the researcher complains.
Aubrey Beardsley. Venus between the terminals of the Gods
Dr. Linda Gertner Zatlin believes that constant drawing helped Beardsley take his mind off thoughts about his health. This becomes clear from the line [in the letter]: “If I think about this, I’m going to die faster.” In 1936, critic J. Lewis May wrote that the artist seemed “to be composed of atoms moving with such incredible speed that it created the illusion of absolute calm.”
All of Aubrey Beardsley's known correspondence will be published in the next few years.
Aubrey Beardsley, "The Peacock Dress" (1893)
Aubrey Beardsley, The Black Cape (1893)
The professor visited the places where Beardsley lived and worked, the institutions where his drawings are kept, studied the treasures of private collectors and spoke with the descendants of people who knew the artist, including Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde. He helped decipher the Victorian floral symbolism in the works: vines signify intoxication, water lilies signify a pure heart, and sunflowers signify adoration.
Aubrey Beardsley, "Abbé Fanfreluche" (1895)
Linda Gertner Zatlin has counted about 400 original works by Beardsley that are now lost, but are mentioned in documents or preserved in reproductions. Apparently, his notebooks, which his sister saved, also disappeared. One series of drawings was destroyed in a fire in 1929, and 118 letters remain undiscovered. All known correspondence will be published in the next few years.
In addition, it became clear that the first art historians who studied Beardsley did not subject the facts to careful verification. “Leave it alone, no one will be interested in this,” one scientist replied to his colleague when he asked how to clarify the details.
Dr. Zatlin also identified many fakes. At least one of Beardsley's friends made and sold forgeries even during the artist's lifetime.
Aubrey Beardsley, How Arthur Met the Roaring Beast
The book also contains a list of prices at which the works were sold at auctions.
In 2012, the Princeton University Library bought a copy of Stéphane Mallarmé's poem with Beardsley's sketches in the margins at a Bonhams auction in London, spending about $24,000. Dr. Zatlin also documented her own acquisitions. Among them is a drawing of a pianist by a pond in the open air ($34,500 in 2004 at Neal auction); a group portrait of robed chorus members in a London theater (about $5,000 at Ketterer Kunst auction in 2006); portrait of actress Gabrielle Réjean, made in red chalk ($55,000 at Christie’s in 2015).
Aubrey Beardsley, "Singer"
Dr Linda Gaertner Zatlin said her book had created a kind of “permanent home” for Beardsley, who spent much of his life in rented apartments.
Aubrey Beardsley, The Funeral of Salome. The final"
- March 16, Menton, France) - English graphic artist, illustrator, decorator, poet, one of the most prominent representatives of English aestheticism and art nouveau in the 1890s.
Childhood and youth
Aubrey Beardsley was born into the family of Vincent Paul Beardsley, whose relatives were wealthy London jewelers, and Helen Agnes Pitt, who came from a family of doctors. Several generations in my father's family suffered from tuberculosis. In 1879, seven-year-old Aubrey was given a similar diagnosis. In addition, the frivolous father, soon after the wedding, squandered all the family money and, since he could not engage in constant work due to illness, his mother, whom Aubrey idolized, had to earn a living as a governess teaching music and French. The family realized early on that their son was a child prodigy. He began drawing at the age of four; under the influence of his mother, he became interested in English and French literature at an early age; thanks to her music lessons, he realized his extraordinary talent. With the support of several aristocratic families, he studied with famous pianists and, as a result, at the age of 11 he composed music and poetry that was distinguished by rare grace, and from March 1881 (moving to London), together with his sister Mabel (who later became an actress), he gave concerts , which attracted up to 3,000 people. After returning to his native Brighton, he also finds support for his talents and stages plays on the school stage, some of which attract the attention of theater critics. After leaving school, Aubrey first entered the studio of a London architect as a draftsman, and at the age of seventeen he was assigned to serve as a clerk at the London insurance company The Guardian Life and Fire Insurance. However, he had to give up his service and amateur performances: in the fall the young man began coughing up blood. It was at this time that, of all types of art, Beardsley gave preference to fine art. Despite his illness, for some time he attended classes at the Westminster Art School with Professor Frederick Brown on the advice of Edward Burne-Jones, who, by the way, introduced him to Oscar Wilde. However, he achieved everything in art on his own, and therefore is considered a talented self-taught person.
Adulthood
He valued his reputation as a music lover and bibliophile. His lovingly assembled vast library was a delight, as was his brilliant knowledge of the collections of the British Museum and the National Gallery. Aubrey Beardsley read Greek and Latin authors in the original and “often amazed scholars with the keenness of his perception of all the subtleties,” as a contemporary wrote about him. Fame overtook him in 1892, when he commissioned the publisher John Dent to complete a series of illustrations for Sir Thomas Malory's novel Le Morte d'Arthur. One of the distinguishing features of his work was its subtle eroticism. The critic Sergei Makovsky, who was one of the first to reveal Beardsley to the Russian public, described them in his essay:
Like flowers nurtured by the hand of a connoisseur in glass greenhouses with artificial moisture (...) the poison of too subtle smokes and too refined forms.
Therefore, there were often two versions of them: the original and approved by the censor. For the same reason, ordinary people often perceived him inadequately: “a sower of public depravity,” a homosexual and a seducer of his own sister Maybelle. Recognizing this, Beardsley repeatedly noted that "The French police have serious doubts about my gender." And he immediately added that all those who doubt “can come and see for themselves in person” - however, this was a response to an article in the newspaper “St. Paul" full of rude innuendos. But he spoke with delight about artists and writers who were completely hostile to his aspirations. In 1894, Aubrey became art editor of the Yellow Book magazine. "The Yellow Book"), which gained popularity as a collection of works by talented writers, poets, and artists, mainly of a homoerotic nature. A member of the hedonist club, one of the “kings of dandyism”, wearing a withered rose in his buttonhole, he cultivated scandal with his behavior. It happened closely related to the tragedy of Oscar Wilde. When he went to prison in 1895, accused of homosexual relations, he took with him a yellow book. The journalist who commented on this mistakenly wrote “the yellow book” instead of “a yellow book.” For Victorian England, this was enough to close the publication. So Beardsley was left without a livelihood.
Beardsley-peacockskirt.PNG
Peacock skirt
Love note
Aubrey Beardsley - Pierrot 1.jpg
Pierrot Library
RapeLock7Cave of Spleen.jpeg
Spleen's Cave
Personal life
Nothing is known about Beardsley's romantic involvements, or his relationships with men or women. Bursley's living room, hung with Japanese erotic prints, was visited by Oscar Wilde, Robert Ross, Alfred Douglas (Bowsey), Pierre Louis, and John Gray, famous for their unconventional sexual orientation. The poet-theorist Marc-Andre Raffalovich, whose book of poems “The Thread and the Path” he illustrated in 1895, also belonged to the same circle. The artist’s poor health contributed to his isolation in the world of pure art. There were rumors that Sister Mabel had a miscarriage with Aubrey. The publisher of the Yellow Book, John Lane, once remarked that “Beardsley suffered a lot from too hasty an assessment of his art.”
Last years
From 1894 to 1896 (at this time, unprecedented success came to him after the publication of 16 illustrations for Wilde’s “Salome”), his health deteriorated sharply - and then gloomy drawings were created for “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe (). First, Aubrey thinks about how to get better, then how to feel a little better, and finally how to live at least one more month. He wrote to Raffalovich at this time:
I know that my illness is incurable, but I am sure that measures can be taken to ensure that its progress is less rapid. Don't think I'm stupid for haggling over a few months, but you will understand that they can be valuable to me for many reasons. I am starting to think with pleasure that I will release two or three illustrated things...
On March 31, 1897, Beardsley was received into the Catholic Church. “Among his closest friends during his lifetime were Anglican pastors and Catholic priests, who paid tribute to the sincerity and depth of his faith” ... He receives what he passionately prayed for: another year of life. During this time, he created a series of illustrations for the comedy of manners "Volpone" by Ben Jonson, which marked the beginning of a new style. At this time, he constantly rereads the works of Blaise Pascal and writes to Raffalovich:
He [Pascal] realized that, having become a Christian, a creative person must sacrifice his gift, just as Magdalene sacrifices her beauty."
Death
His last refuge was the “lemon paradise” of Menton on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Already bedridden, in a letter he implored his friend-publisher Leonard Smithers to “destroy all copies of Lysistrata and indecent drawings and engraving boards for them.” Fortunately, this request was not fulfilled. On March 16, 1898, fully conscious, in the presence of his mother and sister, whom he instructed to convey his last regards to his many friends, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley died. On the death of the artist, Algernon Swinburne wrote this poem (translation by I. A. Evsa):
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Notes
Literature
- Sidorov A. A. Beardsley's art. - M., 1926.
- Beardsley O. Drawings. Prose. Poetry. Aphorisms. Letters. Memories and articles about Beardsley / Introductory article, album project, compilation, preparation of texts and notes by A. Basmanov. - M.: Game-technique, 1992. - 288 p. - ISBN 5-900360-03-2.
- Masterpieces of graphics. Aubrey Beardsley. - M.: Eksmo, 2007.
- Weintraub St. Beardsley. - Harmondsworth, 1972.
Links to Beardsley's original works
- The Savoy Magazine (1896)
Excerpt characterizing Beardsley, Aubrey
- Oh, that’s what I’m saying! - she said. “I don’t understand, I absolutely don’t understand, why men can’t live without war? Why do we women don’t want anything, don’t need anything? Well, you be the judge. I tell him everything: here he is his uncle’s adjutant, the most brilliant position. Everyone knows him so much and appreciates him so much. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard a lady ask: “est ca le fameux prince Andre?” Ma parole d'honneur! [Is this the famous Prince Andrei? Honestly!] – She laughed. - He is so accepted everywhere. He could very easily be an adjutant in the wing. You know, the sovereign spoke to him very graciously. Annette and I talked about how this would be very easy to arrange. How do you think?Pierre looked at Prince Andrei and, noticing that his friend did not like this conversation, did not answer.
- When are you leaving? - he asked.
- Ah! ne me parlez pas de ce depart, ne m"en parlez pas. Je ne veux pas en entendre parler, [Oh, don’t tell me about this departure! I don’t want to hear about it," the princess spoke in such a capriciously playful tone, like she spoke to Hippolyte in the living room, and who obviously did not go to the family circle, where Pierre was, as it were, a member - Today, when I thought that I needed to break off all these dear relationships... And then, you know, Andre? She blinked significantly at her husband. “J"ai peur, j"ai peur! [I'm scared, I'm scared!] she whispered, shaking her back.
The husband looked at her as if he was surprised to notice that someone else besides him and Pierre was in the room; and he turned inquiringly to his wife with cold politeness:
– What are you afraid of, Lisa? “I can’t understand,” he said.
– That’s how all men are selfish; everyone, everyone is selfish! Because of his own whims, God knows why, he abandons me, locks me in the village alone.
“With your father and sister, don’t forget,” Prince Andrei said quietly.
- Still alone, without my friends... And he wants me not to be afraid.
Her tone was already grumbling, her lip lifted, giving her face not a joyful, but a brutal, squirrel-like expression. She fell silent, as if finding it indecent to talk about her pregnancy in front of Pierre, when that was the essence of the matter.
“Still, I don’t understand, de quoi vous avez peur, [What are you afraid of," Prince Andrei said slowly, without taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed and waved her hands desperately.
- Non, Andre, je dis que vous avez tellement, tellement change... [No, Andrei, I say: you have changed so, so...]
“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrei. - You should go to bed.
The princess said nothing, and suddenly her short, whiskered sponge began to tremble; Prince Andrei, standing up and shrugging his shoulders, walked around the room.
Pierre looked in surprise and naively through his glasses, first at him, then at the princess, and stirred, as if he, too, wanted to get up, but was again thinking about it.
“What does it matter to me that Monsieur Pierre is here,” the little princess suddenly said, and her pretty face suddenly blossomed into a tearful grimace. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time, Andre: why did you change so much towards me?” What I did to you? You're going to the army, you don't feel sorry for me. For what?
- Lise! - Prince Andrey just said; but in this word there was a request, a threat, and, most importantly, an assurance that she herself would repent of her words; but she continued hastily:
“You treat me like I’m sick or like a child.” I see everything. Were you like this six months ago?
“Lise, I ask you to stop,” said Prince Andrei even more expressively.
Pierre, who became more and more agitated during this conversation, stood up and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
- Calm down, princess. It seems like this to you, because I assure you, I myself experienced... why... because... No, excuse me, a stranger is superfluous here... No, calm down... Goodbye...
Prince Andrei stopped him by the hand.
- No, wait, Pierre. The princess is so kind that she will not want to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.
“No, he only thinks about himself,” said the princess, unable to hold back her angry tears.
“Lise,” said Prince Andrei dryly, raising his tone to the degree that shows that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’s beautiful face was replaced by an attractive and compassion-arousing expression of fear; She glanced from under her beautiful eyes at her husband, and on her face appeared that timid and confessing expression that appears on a dog, quickly but weakly waving its lowered tail.
- Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! [My God, my God!] - said the princess and, picking up the fold of her dress with one hand, she walked up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
“Bonsoir, Lise, [Good night, Liza,”] said Prince Andrei, getting up and politely, like a stranger, kissing his hand.
The friends were silent. Neither one nor the other began to speak. Pierre glanced at Prince Andrei, Prince Andrei rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“Let’s go have dinner,” he said with a sigh, getting up and heading to the door.
They entered the elegantly, newly, richly decorated dining room. Everything, from napkins to silver, earthenware and crystal, bore that special imprint of novelty that happens in the household of young spouses. In the middle of dinner, Prince Andrei leaned on his elbow and, like a man who has had something on his heart for a long time and suddenly decides to speak out, with an expression of nervous irritation in which Pierre had never seen his friend before, he began to say:
– Never, never get married, my friend; Here's my advice to you: don't get married until you tell yourself that you did everything you could, and until you stop loving the woman you chose, until you see her clearly; otherwise you will make a cruel and irreparable mistake. Marry an old man, good for nothing... Otherwise, everything that is good and lofty in you will be lost. Everything will be spent on little things. Yes Yes Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you expect something from yourself in the future, then at every step you will feel that everything is over for you, everything is closed except for the living room, where you will stand on the same level as a court lackey and an idiot... So what!...
He waved his hand energetically.
Pierre took off his glasses, causing his face to change, showing even more kindness, and looked at his friend in surprise.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrei, “is a wonderful woman.” This is one of those rare women with whom you can be at peace with your honor; but, my God, what I wouldn’t give now not to be married! I’m telling you this alone and first, because I love you.
Prince Andrei, saying this, looked even less like than before that Bolkonsky, who was lounging in Anna Pavlovna’s chair and, squinting through his teeth, spoke French phrases. His dry face was still trembling with the nervous animation of every muscle; the eyes, in which the fire of life had previously seemed extinguished, now shone with a radiant, bright shine. It was clear that the more lifeless he seemed in ordinary times, the more energetic he was in these moments of almost painful irritation.
“You don’t understand why I’m saying this,” he continued. – After all, this is a whole life story. You say Bonaparte and his career,” he said, although Pierre did not talk about Bonaparte. – You say Bonaparte; but Bonaparte, when he worked, walked step by step towards his goal, he was free, he had nothing but his goal - and he achieved it. But tie yourself to a woman, and like a shackled convict, you lose all freedom. And everything that you have in you of hope and strength, everything only weighs you down and torments you with remorse. Living rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, insignificance - this is a vicious circle from which I cannot escape. I am now going to war, to the greatest war that has ever happened, but I know nothing and am no good for anything. “Je suis tres aimable et tres caustique, [I am very sweet and very eater,” continued Prince Andrei, “and Anna Pavlovna listens to me.” And this stupid society, without which my wife and these women cannot live... If only you could know what toutes les femmes distinguees [all these women of good society] and women in general are! My father is right. Selfishness, vanity, stupidity, insignificance in everything - these are women when they show everything as they are. If you look at them in the light, it seems that there is something, but nothing, nothing, nothing! Yes, don’t get married, my soul, don’t get married,” Prince Andrei finished.
“It’s funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you consider yourself incapable, that your life is a spoiled life.” You have everything, everything is ahead. And you…
He didn’t say you, but his tone already showed how highly he valued his friend and how much he expected from him in the future.
“How can he say that!” thought Pierre. Pierre considered Prince Andrei to be a model of all perfections precisely because Prince Andrei united to the highest degree all those qualities that Pierre did not have and which can be most closely expressed by the concept of willpower. Pierre was always amazed at Prince Andrei's ability to calmly deal with all kinds of people, his extraordinary memory, erudition (he read everything, knew everything, had an idea about everything) and most of all his ability to work and study. If Pierre was often struck by Andrei’s lack of ability for dreamy philosophizing (to which Pierre was especially prone), then in this he saw not a disadvantage, but a strength.
In the best, most friendly and simple relationships, flattery or praise is necessary, just as greasing is necessary for the wheels to keep them moving.
E.L.Nemirovsky
“His personality had to be charming” these words were said by the famous art critic Alexei Alekseevich Sidorov (1891-1978) about the artist, without whom, like without William Morris, the newest art and design would not have taken place. In English, his name is written Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, but with the light hand of Russian art historians, who at the beginning of the twentieth century wrote the first books and articles in Russian about this artist, he was called Aubrey Beardsley. The correct transcription sounds like Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, but we will call the artist by his old name, so as not to violate the tradition that has developed and is firmly established in Russian literature.
This master, now thoroughly forgotten, at one time had a colossal influence on the new art of the book that was emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Russia, his precepts were largely followed by the masters from the World of Art association, and above all Konstantin Andreevich Somov and Lev Samoilovich Bakst, to whose work our next articles will be devoted.
“This is a completely modern artist,” the once famous playwright and critic Nikolai Nikolaevich Evreinov (1879-1953) wrote about Beardsley in 1912. Even more modern now than in the years of his life. He died at the very end of the 19th century, leaving a legacy of art, where everything, from form to content, was created for the joy of the 20th century, which was fed up with its father’s blessings and did not find its own.” These words are still true today, because the beginning of the 21st century is also characterized by such satiety.
The art of the book of the last century largely came out of Beardsley. That is why we decided to include an essay dedicated to him in a series of articles about book artists of the twentieth century. Aubrey Beardsley practiced a combination of lines and spots in his work. “No one had ever brought a simple line to its inevitable end with such confidence,” art critics wrote about Beardsley. And they even declared the need for a special approach to evaluating his work: “His drawings should be evaluated independently, as they were conceived, without the purpose of interpreting or even illustrating a specific author.”
The life path of Aubrey Vincent Beardsley is not difficult to trace: he lived only 25 years, but he worked actively for five years, no more (fate is sometimes cruel to talented people, sparingly measuring out their earthly term). Beardsley was born in Brighton, a small seaside town in southeast England. When reporting the date of his birth (as well as the date of his death), different authors contradict each other. There is a certain mythologization in this that is characteristic of the artist’s entire life. However, most researchers are inclined to believe that Aubrey Beardsley was born on August 21, 1872. The family of the future artist was not rich, but quite wealthy. Aubrey was not deprived of the attention of his parents, although his father died when he was still a child. For his mother, he was the light in the window. The boy began drawing at the age of four and was gifted beyond measure with other talents: he wrote poetry, participated in theatrical performances, played excellent music and even performed in public concerts; He was greatly influenced by the music of Richard Wagner. Aubrey Beardsley was always in poor health: the first signs of tuberculosis, which later brought him to the grave, were noticed when the boy was seven years old.
At the age of eleven, Aubrey successfully copied the drawings of the then popular English artist Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), who became famous for illustrating books for children, in particular the famous “Mother Goose”, and there were even buyers for these copies. And then, at the age of fifteen, the young artist independently illustrated “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert, “Manon Lescaut” by Abbé Antoine Francois de Prevost and “Naughty Tales” by Honore de Balzac. The set of names and works speaks of the excellent education of the young man, who knew fiction well, as well as his commitment to the belles-lettres of the French, more expressive and passionate than that of the inhabitants of the British Isles. “What a homebody English literature is! Beardsley wrote in his mature years. “It is easy to name as many as fifty minor French writers whose works are familiar to the whole world, and it is difficult to name four of our greatest authors whose works would be read by a large public outside England.” There is no need to talk about the justice of these words: it was written and published in 1896 after George Byron, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, known and read all over the world.
Aubrey Beardsley did not receive a systematic education. And is it necessary for creative people? An institution that biographers call a “Kindergarten”, preparatory classes, then a grammar school in Brighton, where the boy spent less than four years (from November 1884 to July 1888) - that’s, perhaps, all of his universities. The artist’s first biographer, writer and art critic Robert Baldwin Ross (1869-1918), according to the headmaster of the grammar school, said that Aubrey “was constantly cited as an example to other students as an example of diligence... Beardsley also had a penchant for stage, and he often played in front of large audiences... He organized weekly theatrical performances at school, and he himself drew and illustrated the programs. He even wrote a farce, “A Brown Study,” which was performed in Brighton and attracted serious attention from local dramatic critics.”
Beautiful Isolde writes a message to Sir Tristram. Illustration from “Le Morte d’Arthur” by T. Malory, 1893-1894.
Despite the lack of systematic education, Beardsley was truly intelligent, well-read, and knew Latin and French. His poetic and prose experiments, most of which were not published during his lifetime, reveal a precise sense of words and style.
If we talk about Beardsley’s artistic education, it lasted only a few months, during which Aubrey attended Professor Fred Brown’s school in Westminster. We would not be wrong if we call Beardsley self-taught. His work, however, is quite professional, although there is no sense of what is usually called “school” in it.
The future master began introducing his drawings to the public during his student years in the school magazine The Pied Piper of Hamelin. However, in the first years of independent life, when Beardsley worked as a draftsman for one of the London architects, and then served in an insurance company, he did not strive to make his drawing a means of subsistence. He willingly exchanged his drawings for books, gradually becoming an inveterate bibliophile.
Title page to "Wit" by S. Smith and R.B. Sheridan, 1894
And in those years Beardsley dreamed not of artistic, but of literary fame. But fate decreed otherwise: he was noticed by art critic Joseph Pennel, who in April 1893 published an article about him in the very influential London art magazine The Studio. The article was generously illustrated with drawings by the young artist. The result was a stream of very profitable orders, which allowed Beardsley to leave the service that had long bored him.
The real debut that immediately made his name famous took place in 1893. Aubrey Vincent Beardsley's first truly professional work was the design of the very popular book Le Morte d'Arthur in England, a collection of tales of chivalry recorded by the 15th-century English writer Thomas Malory (died 1471).
Despite his predilection for the French, Beardsley nevertheless began with English literature. Arthur is a semi-legendary king of Britain who, according to legend, reigned in the 6th century. Le Morte d'Arthur, with some abbreviations, was first published in 1485 by the English pioneer William Caxton (1422-1491). Beardsley, as it were, continued the tradition of William Morris, who also began by reprinting books once published by Caxton. We know about Malory only what the English pioneer printer reported about him in the preface to his edition: he was a knight and served at the court of King Edward IV (1442-1483). Only two copies of the first edition of Le Morte d'Arthur survive, and these served as the originals for later reprints, and it was not until 1934 that an older manuscript was found in Westminster.
The edition of Le Morte d'Arthur with illustrations and design by Aubrey Vincent Beardsley appeared thanks to the initiative of the bookseller and publisher Joseph Dent (Joseph Malaby Dent, 1849-1926). His publishing venture had a specific goal, namely to prove that the artistic level of the wonderful but small-circulation editions of William Morris's Kelmscott Press could be achieved and even surpassed by ordinary commercial publishing. Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, who had just turned 21, handled the difficult task admirably. And yet, reminiscences of the publications of Morris’s Kelmscott Press enterprise and some imitation are felt at almost every step.
Drawing for “Wit” by S. Smith and R.B. Sheridan, 1894.
By placing the pages of books in ornamental frames, as William Morris did, Beardsley showed himself to be more inventive and free. The flowers, foliage, and fruits that fill the ornament are often absolutely fantastic. They are often complemented by figurines of fairy-tale creatures scattered throughout, and sometimes goat-footed satyrs, both male and female. The winged heads of cherubs are generally very far from the Christian iconographic tradition. In addition to the ornamental frames, the book is also decorated with large initials placed at the beginning of each chapter. The characters in numerous illustrations, quite specific in Edward Coley Burn-Jones (1833-1898), who designed Morris’s books, are symbolized in Le Morte d’Arthur: they are somehow flat and often seem to lack three-dimensionality. Free imagination and free flight of the pen are at the forefront.
The most important difference from the works of William Morris, who decorated books with woodcuts and woodcuts (he did not recognize the new photomechanical technology), is immediately apparent. Aubrey Beardsley uses other techniques: he draws with ink, pen, and sometimes his drawings are difficult to distinguish from woodcuts due to very skillful imitation. The drawings were reproduced using the line zincography technique, which significantly reduced the cost of the book. In terms of reproduction, Morris's publications belong to the past, while Beardsley's books, on the contrary, call to the future. The new technique made it possible, if necessary, to easily adjust the drawing by gluing or covering unnecessary lines with whitewash, correcting and adding individual details. With photomechanical reproduction, it is not difficult to ensure that all corrections are not visible on the original that was used to make the printing plate. Black and white zincography in those days confidently entered the book, gradually displacing labor-intensive woodcuts. However, already in the 1920s, manual reproduction technology managed to take its revenge: it again attracted the attention of masters of design art.
The young artist worked on “Le Morte d’Arthur” with great passion. Drawings on double-page spreads, full-page illustrations and relatively small shaped headpieces introducing chapters introduced the reader to the numerous heroes of Thomas Malory's book - King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, the wizard Merlin, the brave knight Lancelot, the beautiful Isolde and Sir Tristram, the fairy Morgana...
In contrast to Edward Burne-Jones, Beardsley did not strive for a documented accurate reproduction of medieval paraphernalia: his landscapes are conventional, the trees and flowers growing in the fields and forests are frankly fantastic. The same can be said about the clothes of the heroes. In general, self-sufficient decorativeness was put at the forefront, to which absolutely everything was subordinated.
In this work the main features of Aubrey Vincent Beardsley's style have already been fully demonstrated. In his drawings there are only two colors: black and white. There are no gradations of gray halftones - it’s like “yes” and “no”, like “light” and “darkness”, there is no third option. The solid black fill in contrast with the white planes is surprisingly decorative, which is why the characters in Beardsley’s drawings look somewhat flat, because the artist does not use shading that reveals volume. And yet, contemporaries saw in Beardsley a successor to the traditions of the classical graphic masters. His friend and publisher John Lane, who published two books about Beardsley at the turn of the 20th century, wrote that he “advanced the art of black and white further than anyone since Albrecht Dürer.”
"Le Morte d'Arthur" was conceived as a bibliophile publication, but incomparably more widespread and cheaper than the editions of William Morris. In 1893-1894, the book was published in several editions, which were later combined into two volumes. In 1908, a new edition appeared, and the circulation was limited: 1000 copies for the UK and 500 for the USA (the circulation of Kelmscott Press books, as the reader familiar with our previous article remembers, did not exceed 300 copies).
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley perceived the book as something integral, where type, illustrations, ornaments, and page layout actively interact. There can be no real book art without this. (It must be said that major masters, for example Ilya Efimovich Repin, who were sometimes involved in illustration, were not book artists.)
The general public greeted Le Morte d'Arthur with enthusiasm, and this publication is still popular in England. The reaction of specialists was more restrained, and even today art critics write little about this work of the young artist, because they see in it, first of all, reminiscences of the design skills of William Morris.
The same Joseph Dent who published Le Morte d'Arthur also published Wit in 1894 by Sidney Smith (1771-1845) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). Aubrey Beardsley draws the title page and many figurative vignettes for this edition. The title text is placed in a wide decorative frame, but unlike the frames of Le Morte d'Arthur there is no solid black fill. The light feather design is careless in its own way, however, here too, figures of people are woven into the ornament, which is more geometric than floral, and in the upper right corner of the frame there is an evilly grinning animal head, similar to the head of a cat with excessively long ears. As for the light and equally careless pen drawings, they are populated by beautiful, elegantly dressed ladies, as well as fantastic creatures entering into equally fantastic relationships with each other. There are women's heads with dwarfs jumping out of their ears, human figures with long snake necks unexpectedly ending in bird heads, and all sorts of cats - sometimes with human legs and women's breasts. (This pet generally played a significant role in Beardsley’s state of mind. “I’m as nervous as a cat,” he wrote in one of his letters.) The artist’s free flight of thought seemed to know no limits. The reproduction technique in the drawings for “Wit” is so refined that the drawings seem to have been made with one touch of the pen.
Also in 1894, Aubrey Beardsley completed five drawings for the True History of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian (c. 117 c. 180). The book was published by the London publishing house Lawrence and Bullen and is classified as a publication not intended for public distribution. It was here that Beardsley's extraordinary talent in the field that is vaguely called erotic art first manifested itself. The artist paints bacchanalia and very frank dreams, depicts strange creatures generated by Lucian’s fantasy. For Victorian England, this was a kind of shock, but from our point of view, enriched by the experience of the twentieth century, which removed all prohibitions and restrictions, the drawings for “True History” seem quite innocent.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was born in Brighton, England on August 21, 1872. His father was from a family of London jewelers, and his mother was respectable doctors. The artist's father, Vincent Paul Beardsley, suffered from tuberculosis. The disease was hereditary, so he could not engage in regular work. In addition, he was frivolous and soon after the wedding squandered all the family money. Beardsley's mother, born Helen Agnus Pitt, had to take a job as a governess: she taught music and French. For Aubrey himself and his sister Mabel, their childhood years were remembered by their mother's constant struggle with numerous financial difficulties.
Beardsley early realized the exceptionality of his position. When he was seven years old, it turned out that his father’s illness was passed on to his son. Nowadays, tuberculosis does not inspire such fear as it did at the end of the 19th century. For Beardsley, the disease meant that he could die unpredictably early and quickly. He, being still very young, understood this all too well. At school, Beardsley rarely participated in general games; he was exempted from physical exercises and difficult tasks; I could always retire to a book, citing indisposition. Books became his best friends. Thanks to his mother, Aubrey knew English and French literature well at a young age. He began writing poetry early, and his passion for theater led to Beardsley writing plays. Some of them were performed first at home and then at school. Beardsley himself played in them. Sometimes up to three thousand spectators gathered for such, generally speaking, children's productions. Aubrey had a great stage presence and could captivate a large audience.
Beardsley's other passion was music. The early lessons his mother gave him showed that he was endowed with extraordinary musical talent. Thanks to the support of several aristocratic families, Beardsley studied intensively with famous pianists, improving his skills, at the age of 11 he was already giving concerts in public, composing music that was distinguished by a peculiar grace rare for that age. Many predicted a good future for Aubrey.
All these brilliant inclinations were not destined to develop. After graduating from school, Beardsley got a job as a clerk in one of the offices in London. Less than a year later, at the end of 1889, he began to cough up blood and was forced to leave his job: from now on only art filled his life. The feeling of death standing behind me made me live as if every day could be my last.
Although Beardsley always valued his reputation as a music lover, bibliophile, and brilliant connoisseur of the collections of the British Museum and the National Gallery, it was drawing that was the true passion that either filled him with frantic energy or threw him into the pool of blues and depression. This change of state is typical for many patients with tuberculosis, and Beardsley understood that this was shortening his days.
In 1892, Beardsley had a rare stroke of luck for a young unknown artist: he received an order to do illustrations for Malory’s “The Death of King Arthur.” His professional career began with this publication and with participation in issues of the art magazine “Savoy”.
As an artist, Beardsley was initially influenced by William Morisse and Burne Jones, whom he subjectively considered “the greatest artist in Europe.” But their graphic style was too sluggish and weak for the temperamental Beardsley. The study of Japanese prints with the harmony of line and spot became much more important. Deep penetration into the traditions of Japanese art allowed him to create an amazing synthesis of West and East in his own drawings.
In December 1892, Beardsley formulated his creative method: the fantastic impression of a drawing is achieved by a thin, masterly line combined with large spots of solid black. Beardsley's masterful, virtuoso line, playing with the blue-black and whitest spots of silhouettes, made him a world-famous artist in a year or two.
Like a great playwright, Beardsley arranged the figures in his drawings; It was as if he was placing the actors on the theater stage, creating mise-en-scène, forcing them to pronounce the most important, key phrases.
In his art, this artist always remained himself and never adapted to fashion trends. Rather, Art Nouveau and the movement of English decadents were oriented and reached to his level. It was Beardsley who influenced the formation of the visual language of the Art Nouveau style.
In April 1984, Beardsley began collaborating with Yellow Book magazine and soon became its art editor. Beardsley's drawings, poems and essays began to appear here. In addition, the magazine acquired quite a certain scandalous fame due to its erotic orientation. "Yellow Book" was not the only magazine with this focus: "Harpers" and "Atlantic Monthly" published similar stories, drawings, and articles. But Beardsley's talent as an artist and editor made The Yellow Book an outstanding event in the cultural life of England. Good old England had never seen anything like this: the attention to the magazine was too close, and the public was excitedly waiting for the explosion, which soon happened. The reason was the arrest of Beardsley's friend, the famous writer Oscar Wilde, for whom the artist had previously made beautiful illustrations for "Salome", which largely determined the success of the book. When Wilde was arrested on charges of homosexuality, a journalist mistakenly reported that the writer had taken one of the Yellow Book issues with him to his cell, which led to public outrage and demands to close the magazine. Beardsley had to say goodbye to his magazine forever.
As a result, the artist was left without a regular livelihood and did odd jobs until his new acquaintance Leonard Smithers convinced Beardsley to illustrate Juvenal and Aristophanes. At that time, this enterprise was risky and intended only for private and underground publications, but today these illustrations by Beardsley, according to critics, are considered the best of everything made by the artist.
The creative nature of a genius is difficult to explain. Genius and abnormality, from the perspective of ordinary consciousness, are almost identical. A certain pathology of many of Beardsley's drawings is explained to some extent by the fact that he always stood, as it were, on the edge of an abyss: on the one hand, the light of life, on the other, on the other, the abyss of non-existence. Constantly balancing between them, he felt them well. Beardsley seemed to live in and out of his time. This promoted detached observation.
Beardsley's drawings literally made his contemporaries freeze. They inspired fear and awe. It seemed to many that old ideas about art and the world in general were collapsing. And this is natural. Who else, if not a genius, finds something new, unexpected and forbidden?
Shortly before his death, Beardsley became deeply religious and bitterly repented of his erotic works. Already bedridden, in a letter to L. Mirtes he asked to destroy all “indecent” drawings and engraving boards for them.
Aubrey Beardsley died in the resort of Menton, France, off the Mediterranean coast in 1898, at the age of twenty-five.
exhibition name:“Aubrey Beardsley. Artist and esthete"
time spending: 14.07.2015-28.03.2016
location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place WC2H 0HE, London UK
exhibition website: www.npg.org.uk
The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting the exhibition “Aubrey Beardsley. Artist and Aesthete,” which focuses on the work of Beardsley the graphic artist and poet. Visitors to the exhibition will get acquainted with original drawings and beautiful illustrations for Malory’s novel “King Arthur” and Wilde’s play “Salome.” The exhibition features photographs and portraits of Aubrey Beardsley.
The famous English graphic artist, poet, and illustrator Aubrey Vincent Beardsley took an active part in the formation of the concept of aestheticism in England. He created a unique artistic language, which not only defined many of the characteristic features of Art Nouveau graphics, but remains modern to this day.
Aubrey Beardsley. Artist and esthete.
The 19th century was “marked” in history as the era of rethinking old philosophical concepts, the emergence of new ones and, which is typical for this period, the coexistence of different philosophical movements - positivism, Marxism, neo-Kantinianism and neo-Hegelianism. In the unstable, rapidly changing world of the 19th century, a revaluation of values also occurred in culture. Unlike previous eras, the 19th century did not develop a single stylistic direction in culture, but the ideas and images that emerged in the second half of the century enriched the culture of the 20th century as classical ones. A feature of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was the division of artistic culture into elite and mass. Moral criticism became a solid foundation on which many new theories were built. One of them was aestheticism, an art movement that expressed the tendencies of European decadence and its offshoot in England in the 1880-1890s, which arose as a reaction not only to Victorian ideology and morality, but to a large extent to morality in general.
Aubrey Beardsley. Peacock skirt.
The chronological range of aestheticism is extremely wide: it arose in ancient times in the East, but passing through eras and transforming, it did not lose its original dogma-cult of Beauty. Beauty is a historically variable concept; in different historical periods it was conceptualized through different aesthetic categories. This explains the phenomenon why different aspects of this philosophical and aesthetic category came to the fore in different historical periods. For many centuries, the intersection of the cultures of East and West determined the direction of the development of art. During the heyday of European aestheticism, traditional Far Eastern art acquired ardent fans among European writers and artists.
Aubrey Beardsley. Black cape.
The roots of aestheticism go back to the romanticism of the early 19th century. This continuity is confirmed by the fact that already in romanticism there was a tendency to deny the social significance of art, which reached its full development in aestheticism and completion in modernism. Aestheticism contrasted Victorian ideology with a hedonistic worldview, which proposed viewing Beauty as the only force capable of improving everyday life and the only means of bringing a person closer to higher spirituality. Refusing to depict reality, which, in their opinion, could not be an aesthetic object, aesthetes entered into polemics with representatives of realism and naturalism, accusing these trends of absolutizing the animal nature of man and reducing him to a being devoid of individuality and spirituality. Rejection of social reality in aestheticism manifested itself in an attempt to escape into the closed sphere of pure art, which led to the creation of the concept of “art for art’s sake.”
Aubrey Beardsley. The sorcerer Virgil.
The concept of aestheticism was brought to England from France in the 1860s by the artist Frederic Leighton and the poets James Whistler and Algernon Swinburne. The ideas of aestheticism received their greatest clarity in the works of John Ruskin (1819-1900), professor of literature at Oxford University Walter Pater (1839-1894) and writer and poet Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). The aesthetic credo of W. Pater, who did not recognize ethical restrictions in the field of art, was to give Beauty the status of the highest value, which placed it above the categories of good and evil. Presented in an infinite variety of forms and manifested in the perfect form of a work of art, Beauty became Truth. Therefore, a person could know the true content of the world only through the comprehension of beauty. The Cult of Beauty not only served to satisfy important spiritual needs. The essence of Pater's concept of life—the desire to assimilate lifestyle to art—ultimately led to the enormous influence of aesthetics on etiquette. The feeling of being chosen (an esthete is a subtle connoisseur of beauty) gave rise to new moral standards that justify extraordinary behavior, and a revival of dandyism, which left its mark on the appearance and behavior of artists. But behind the outward shockingness of dandyism, it is necessary to see, appreciate and pay tribute to their true talent, their ability to have an extraordinary outlook on life, their inimitable elegance and unshakable belief in the highest value of art. Like-minded people of W. Pater united around the magazines “Savoy” and “Yellow Book”, published in 1894-1895. These were the poets Arthur Symons, Ernest Dawson, John Davidson, and the artist and poet Aubrey Beardsley.
Aubrey Beardsley. “Belinda’s Toilet,” illustration for A. Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock.”
Within the framework of English aestheticism there is a rich variety of options: if the work of some aesthetes (Wilde, Whistler) turned out to be richer and deeper than the dogmas of aestheticism, then others, such as the theorist of aestheticism W. Pater, were unable to fully realize their ideas. An exception is Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898), whose exquisite work meets almost all the requirements of aestheticism. The creative rise of Aubrey Beardsley has no analogues in the history of European fine art. In just 5 years of active creative activity out of his short 25 years of life, without writing a single painting, without having a single lifetime personal exhibition, Aubrey Beardsley gained world fame for his art of drawing and book graphics.
Aubrey Beardsley. Illustration for his own short story “Venus and Tannhäuser”.
Beardsley's success was in his personal qualities - Aubrey was endowed with many talents. He owed the development of his extraordinary musical and literary abilities to the mother-daughter team of respectable London doctors. The eleven-year-old boy was predicted to have a brilliant future as a pianist: already at such a young age he gave public concerts that attracted up to 3,000 spectators and composed music. But the wide horizon of his possibilities narrowed significantly when, at the age of 7, Aubrey was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Unfortunately, the misfortune was predictable: the boy’s father was also sick with tuberculosis. At the end of the 19th century, this diagnosis sounded like a death sentence: the chances of survival were negligible. The disease determined the boy’s lifestyle: communication with peers in games was replaced by books. Thanks to his mother, who knew English and French literature very well, Aubrey began writing poetry early, and later plays, in which he himself acted. His youthful passion for theater can subsequently be traced in Beardsley’s visual work, where play, the grotesque and masks prevail.
Aubrey Beardsley. Dreams.
But his true vocation was drawing, and Aubrey Beardsley won a strong place in the history of art as a book illustrator. Beardsley is considered a self-taught genius: he has only 3 months of classes under his belt with Professor F. Brown at the Westminster Art School. Beardsley's successful professional start dates back to 1892, when he, commissioned by the publisher John Dent, produced a series of illustrations for the novel “The Death of King Arthur” by Thomas Malory and took part in issues of the Savoy art magazine.
Aubrey Beardsley. "Merlin", illustration for Malory's novel.
In April 1894, Beardsley began collaborating with the Yellow Book magazine, which published his poems and essays, and soon took up the position of art editor of this magazine. The Yellow Book magazine, a symbol of English decadent aestheticism, was designed by Beardsley, and the magazine's bright yellow cover with a black silhouette became the emblem of an entire decade, called the Yellow Nineties in England. The choice of yellow as a color emblem is explained by a persistent prejudice, “deposited” in cultural memory since the Middle Ages, that yellow is the color of treason, sinfulness and scandal. Beardsley's editorial work, artistic talent, and mannered, sophisticated style earned the magazine a cult reputation.
Art magazine "Yellow Book".
16 illustrations for the play “Salome” by Oscar Wilde brought resounding success and European fame in 1896. The joy of success was overshadowed by a sharp deterioration in health, and in the spirit of this mood, Beardsley created gloomy illustrations for the stories of Edgar Poe. During the year of life that fate gave the artist, he created a series of illustrations for the comedy “Volpone” by Ben Jonson, which marked the beginning of a new style. Aubrey Beardsley died on March 16, 1898 in Menton, France, on the Mediterranean coast.
The refined art of Aubrey Beardsley had a huge influence on the development of the European avant-garde and determined many of the characteristic features of Art Nouveau graphics.