Aubrey Vincent Beardsley
21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898
An English illustrator and author. Aubrey Beardsley was the
most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned
for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica,
which were the main themes of his later work. Some of his
drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured
enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations were
on themes of history and mythology.
Beardsley illustrated Oscar Wilde's play Salomé - the play
eventually premiered in Paris in 1896. He also produced
extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a
deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur)
and worked for magazines like The Savoy and The Studio.
Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale
based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser.
Beardsley's emphasis of the erotic element is present in many
of his drawings, but nowhere as boldly as in his illustrations for
Lysistrata which were done for a privately printed edition at a
time when he was totally out of favor with polite society.
