Description

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898) was a fashionable English illustrator and author associated with the aesthetic movement and the development of the art nouveau style. Known today and in his time as a master of black-ink line work executed with supple fluidity and slashing vigor, Beardsley veered away from Victorian convention, choosing instead to portray characters and scenes as he saw them. “Things shape themselves before my eyes just as I draw them. . . . They all seem weird and strange to me.” He asserted that “the grotesque is the only alternative to the insipid commonplace.” His fantastic illustrations expressed his appreciation of the unexpected, the erotic, the dark and decadent.