Catherine Slessor

„The mere glorification of a hideous and putrescent aspect of modern life”; the often hysterical contemporary view of Beardsley's art is in itself a pointer to its power to evoke strong emotional responses, and it is a power that has not diminished over the last 100 years. His was a singular life and a singular art. Dead at 25, Beardsley left a huge corpus of work which would have a greater influence worldwide than that of any English illustrator since Hogarth. The Art of Aubrey Beardsley is a celebration of genius, reproducing hundreds of examples of the artist's disturbing and unique synthesis of abstraction and reality. The book analyses the cultural transformations that influenced, and were influenced by, Beardsleys vision: the establishment of William Morris design company, which formalised the attempt to rescue the decorative arts from the margins of the aesthetic status quo; the effect upon attitudes to art of mass production; reactive fin de siecle "decadence”; and the triumph of Art Nouveau. The events of Beardsley's own short life, essential to the understanding of his work, are explored: acquaintances; critics; influences; employers (Whistler, Rossetti, Hind, Gosse, Smithers, Lautrec); visits to Paris and Brussels; admiration for Japanese non-naturalistic art; and of course, chronic and constant illness. T.S. Eliot pointed out that „good poets borrow, great poets steal”: this remark is peculiarly appropriate to the achievements of Aubrey Beardsley. With little formal artistic training he took the mood of the time and, with his own consummate graphic skill, made it his own. For those who have never studied his work, The Art of Aubrey Beardsley will be a revelation – despite hundreds of imitators, no one has matched such formal, erotic clarity of line and space. Those acquainted with the unique Beardsley style will find much to add to their enjoyment and understanding.