Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley (1872 1898) is best remembered for his powerful illustrations for Salome by Oscar Wilde. Spanning seven years, his intense, prolific career as a draughtsman and illustrator was cut short when he died of tuberculosis aged twenty-five. Beardsley s subversive, sinuous black-and-white drawings and his own complex persona became synonymous with decadence: he alighted on the perverse and erotic aspects of life and legend, shocking audiences with his bizarre sense of humour and fascination with the grotesque in his own words, a new world of my own creation ... quite mad and a little indecent . His keen observation of his contemporaries make him of his time, but his distinct style resonated with subsequent generations, not least because the line-block print process popularised his work and enabled it to be widely circulated. A major influence on the development of Art Nouveau and Sergei Diaghilev in particular, Beardsley was the subject of a large monographic exhibition at the V&A in 1966, which triggered a revival and proved seminal for psychedelic pop culture and design. Beardsley s drawings remain a key reference in body art today and retain great popular appeal. A range of short essays on the key aspects of Beardsley s short but remarkably influential career compliment images of his fascinating work in a sumptuously produced book.