Maria Tsaneva - Aubrey Beardsley--120 Masterpieces -

He said, "I have one aimthe grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair." Beardsley was meticulous about his attire: dove-grey suits, hats, ties; yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a morning coat and patent leather pumps. Beardsley was born in Brighton, England, on 21 August 1872, and christened on 24 Octob er 1872. In 1883 his family settled in London, and in the following year he appeared in public as an "infant musical phenomenon", playing at seve ral concerts with his sister. In January 1885 he began to attend Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School, where he would spend the next four years.

His first poems, drawings and cartoons appeared in print in "Past and Present", the school's magazine. In 1888 he obtained a post in an architect's office, and afterwards one in the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company. In 1891, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, he took up art as a profession. In 1892 he attended the classes at the Westminster School of Art, then under Professor Fred Brown. In 1892, Beardsley travelled to Paris, where he discovered the poster art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Parisian fashion for Japanese prints, both of which would be major influences on his own style. M. M.

Dent and Company. His six years of major creative output can be divided into several periods, identified by the form of his signature. In the early period his work is mostly unsigned. During 1891 and 1892 he progressed to using his initials, A.V.B. In mid-1892, the period of Le Morte d'Arthur and The Bon Mots he used a Japanese-influenced mark which became progressively more graceful, sometimes accompani ed by A.B. in block capitals.

He co-founded The Yellow Book with American writer Henry Harland, and for the first four editions he served as Art Editor and produced the cover designs and many illustrations for the magazine. He was also closely aligned with Aestheticism, the British counterpart of Decadence and Symbolism. Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all. Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. His illustrations were in black and white, against a white ba ckground. Some of his drawings was insp ired by Japanese shunga artwork .

His most famous erotic illustrations concerned themes of history and mythology; these include his illustrations for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896. Other major illustration projects included an 1896 edition of The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and the collection A Book of Fifty Drawing s by Aubrey Beardsley (1897). He also produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines and worked for magazines such as The Studio and The Savoy, of which he was a co-founder. As a cofounder of The Savoy, Beardsley was able to pursue his writing as well as illustration, and a number of his writings, including Under the Hill (a story based on the Tannhuser legend) and The Ballad of a Barb er appeared in the magazine. Beardsley was a caricaturist and did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists such as Pape and Clarke.

Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual. During his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of the disease that would end it. He suffered frequent lung hemorrhages and was often unable to work or leave his home. Beardsley converted to Roman Catholicism in March 1897, and subsequently begged his publisher, Leonard Smithers, to destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings... by all that is holy all obscene drawings." Smithers ignored Beardsleys wishes, and actually continued to sell reproductions as well as forgeries of Beardsley's work.

In 1897 deteriorating health prompted his move to the French Riviera, where he died a year later on 16 March 1898 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Menton, France, attended by his mother and sister. He was 25 years of age and the cause of death was tuberculosis.

Aubrey Beardsley : Masterpieces

B y Maria Tsaneva First Edition Copyright 201 by Maria Tsaneva ***** Aubrey Beardsley: 120 Masterpieces *****

Drawings and Prints

A Book of Fifty Drawings, front cover A Christmas c ard A Devil in Woman's Likeness II A Nocturne of Chopin A Snare of Vintage (1894) A Suggested Reform in Ballet Costume (1895) Ali Baba (1897) Arthur and the Strange Mantle Apollo Pursuing Daphne Ave Atque Vale Atalanta in Calydon with the Hound Avenue Theater / A Comedy of Sighs! (1894) Ballet of Marionettes I