Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography

std black thick white txt: Harpercollins, 1998. Hardcover. Used: Acceptable. Condition good with dust jacket. ref ZKVQ The first biography for 15 years of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98), one of the greatest — and most distinctive — artistic geniuses this country has produced: a quintessential figure of the ‘naughty nineties’ and notorious friend of Oscar Wilde and Max Beerbohm. The book will be published in the centenary year of his death and supersede all previous works. Beardsley, with his infamous reputation, tragic life and instantly recognisable style, is one of the paradigmatic figures of the Modern Age, who worked hard to fashion his persona. Fame, he knew, was the key. It is no surprise, therefore, that both Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe held him in high regard — the latter even collecting his work. Born in Brighton in 1872 of lower-class parents and diagnosed a consumptive at the age of seven, Beardsley quickly established himself as a precocious talent. His erotic, decadent illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s Salome set the tone of his style: by turn shocking, facetious and cruel. Elongated and androgynous himself, he was readily confused with his own degenerate pictures. Sex suffuses his art and accounts for the mixture of fascination and horror with which his pictures were viewed by contemporaries.