9 posts tagged “aubrey beardsley”
"If I am not grotesque, I am nothing."
This is just a note, light and quick like a well-wisher's shadow, to wish my sickly, skinny boy a happy birthday. He would be 137 today, dapper and milk-skinned, had tuberculosis not shot his lungs full of holes. He died in 1898, unable to push his body to his 26th birthday - exhausted by the blood-lettings, and by his art that drove Victorian England to an insanity of fear.
It was a fear of the decadence, eroticism, lush beauty and unbridled richness - crawling under the skin like iridescent beetles - that ran through his drawings. It was the fear of the terrifying life that beat behind the shadows and lived within the lines of those illustrations.
He was Oscar Wilde's 'monstrous orchid', in a gray suit and yellow gloves, effete and marvelous. I can't imagine what it would have been like to meet him, yet I follow him always.
So happy birthday, Aubrey Beardsley. I have never experienced such grotesque loveliness.
On four walls he painted a glittering, gilded cacophony, golden feathers dripping down leather walls, wings that panted against the ceiling, multitudes of patterns that made a mockery of empty space.
Peacocks make human noises; they scream and cry in jagged, lonely tones. But nature apologized to the male of the species for this atonality by providing him with iridescent rainbows that glistened and rippled as he moved, with an aurora borealis glowing from his feathers. Painters, and all aficionados of color, love his betrayal of earthiness, his irresponsible exhibitionism. He was seemingly made for negligence and beauty.
Beardsley drew skirts of peacock's tails that curled around the ankles, and clouds of feathers that breathed over Salome's shoulder:
Wilde made the peacock a symbol of languor and decadence; James MacNeil Whistler dedicated an entire room to this stunning bird with a cry like Lazarus waking in his tomb.
In 1876 Frederick R. Leyland commissioned Whistler to decorate his dining room. Leyland's preferences were serious and symmetrical and he should have known better than to let such an artistic sprite into his home.
Using pots full of gold metallic leaf, he covered the ceiling and panels of the walls in a thin layer of liquid metal, the alloy that began humbly as grains rolling in the bellies of streams and rivers. He then chose one color and investigated its darknesses, chosing its varied shadows as carefully as if they were the newest silks from Lyons. This palette of blue - prussian, cobalt and indigo - was used to sew a textile of feathers that flowed with impatient currents, wings that were as lush and stiff as brocaded draperies, tiny aristocratic heads poised on necks a swan would envy.
Four peacocks were created: four golden tapestries embroidered into the walls; four gardens clipped into a manicured maze that branched into gilded tangles; four streams of light siphoned from the sun and diluting that bright star. He called his glowing aviary: "Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room".
In a creative thrill Whistler wrote to Leyland, telling him that his dining room was "really alive with beauty - brilliant and gorgeous while at the same time delicate and refined to the last degree".
Leyland hated it. He hated the sunburst of feathers that blazed across his dark room like a sunset caught in a bottle. He hated the tendrils of plumes that charted burnished rivers from wall to wall. He hated the effete delicacy of the poised and posing birds. He hated their inescapable loveliness.
He hated Whistler's price.
There was a violent quarrrel - not surprising with two such high examples of ego - and Leyland eventually agreed to pay...half of Whistler's stated amount. He intensified the insult by paying in pounds instead of guineas. Pounds were the currency of trade, not of artists and other professionals. Furthermore, in the 1870's, a pound was worth twenty shillings, with the guinea twenty-one. Whistler lost the arguement, lost money and lost face.
But he got the last laugh.
He gained access into the offending room and painted one more masterpiece. It was a confrontation between two peacocks, frozen in the movements of an angry ballet: one standing with its feet straddling a pile of silver shillings, its throat a path of aggressive ruffles, alluding to Leyland's favored ruffled shirts. The other peacock, recoiling before its rich and greedy rival, has a silver crest feather resembling the lock of white hair that curled above Whistler's forehead. This altercation was called, "Art and Money, or, The Story of the Room."
This was finished in 1877. Whistler never stepped foot in the room again.
I can see your fingers - elongated, they cradle your arch, aquiline face. Your wasted wrists are swimming inside your starched and buttoned shirt cuffs. Your hands are muscular and alive with creative possibilities. Fingers, wrists, hands...all with the ability to grasp a gilded pen annoited with ink and guide it along rich and threaded paper. The slightest turn can make a line curl, thicken, weep, sculpt...and bring to life the shocking images cavorting in your brain.
Om 1896 you were in Paris, a pallid dandy. You had no money. Your lungs were shredded; and every cough threatened another delicate stream of your life's blood. You experimented with hashish. But you would drink only milk.
And still you were creating images that broke my heart:
Bursting from your pen I can see unbridled festoons of baroque madness. Lines boiled within every fold of taffeta, every false extravagant curl, every floating gown, every statuesque feather. Lines are gouged into the curtains like nails tearing into flesh.
Grotesques, fairies, eunuchs, angels and satanic familiars pour into one another in this underworld: they confront, they argue, they leer...they give in to the basest instincts of the human spleen. Some are sexless, some brandish their sexuality like weapons, and run roughshod over their opponents. Thighs and bosoms are lush and white - but there are faces that are wizened and harsh, and profiles that are sharp and fierce. Bodies are decorated, winged, veiled: beautiful and horrible.
They all swim in a sea of drapery. These are creatures that look like 18th century carvings brought to life by your whirlwind affectations. They move beneath huge, jeweled tassels, beside rows of candles; they grow amongst poisonous flowers and threaten garnished urns.
When I first saw your drawings, I had to look away - I had to hide. It was because the purest beauty and perfection, lying inside me unanswered and unrealized, when brought to light will hurt like a white, unbearable heat.
When I go to London, I make it a point to visit certain places. I go to the Cafe Royal, to see if I can still hear the discreet voices, long since hushed; glamorous and disgraced. I go to Paxton & Whitfield to look at the cheese (fortunately, it's a cheese shop). I go shopping at Fortnum and Mason - I get lavender oil for my mother and anchovy paste ('Gentleman's Relish') for my father. I go to Liberty's of London, where I spend mad money on luscious scarves - burnt the color of autumn, or colored a dusky blue and edged in cream embroidery.
I also visit a street: because it has a history, an isolated tragedy in the life of a man, in the world of art. It is Vigo Street, and in 1887 a publishing house opened its doors to that street and to the artistic traffic of a Victorian London dripping with naughtiness and simply panting to be published.
This was the house of John Lane and Elkin Mathews and it was called The Bodley Head, after Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the Bodleian Library. And in the two years spanning 1894/1895 its books became a byword for notoriety, scandal and beauty. Leonard Smithers' fabled collections bound in human skin. 'The Happy Hypocrite', Max Beerbohm's fairytale of masks and redemption. 'Stella Maris', Arthur Symon's love poem to a prostitute ("I know/Your heart holds many a Romeo"). 'Under The Hill' by Aubrey Beardsley - light, baroque, a minuet of Victorian pornography. And 'The Yellow Book', the periodical colored like the French novels gentlemen read in secret (and ladies not at all) - a collection of essays, poems and illustrations: new decadent, irresistible - a dirty pool in which the demi-monde could finally see its reflection.
The newspapers mocked, the critics were shocked: everyone was happy until April 3, 1895. Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor on that day, for "acts of gross indecency", despite his lucid wit, his moving speeches and the applause that followed him like his shadow.
On the following day, crowds gathered outside The Bodley Head - shiny toppers mixed with scruffy caps, frock coats intermingling with ragged shirts...for once the classes stood shoulder to shoulder, and it took a posture of ignorance to do it. Curses were shouted, stones were thrown - heat and ugliness filled the air. And it was all because of the irresponsible reasoning of the mob: the decadence The Yellow Book would surely welcome criminals such as Wilde - wasn't his good friend Aubrey Beardsley (i.e. 'Awfully Weirdsley' - oh, Punch, stop; you're killing me!) its Art Editor? And wasn't this the place where their evil words and tainted thoughts were printed? Tear it down! Tear it down!
No matter that Wilde and Beardsley hated each other, ever since the fiasco over 'Salome'. Wilde wrote the play in French, and ignored Beardsley's offer to translate it into English. Wilde was disappointed in Beardsley's illustrations: they were "like the naughty scribbles a precocious boy makes on the margins of his copybooks." Aubrey never forgave him.
No matter. Oh April 4, the mob sought the source of this artistic dissipation and swarmed through Vigo Street, up to the windows of The Bodley Head, each person intent on casting the first stone.
So - I always walk across Vigo Street when I'm in London. I imagine it without department stores, traffic cones, buses and walking directions painted on the asphalt. I try instead to see it powdered with dust: crowded with carriages, broughams, landaus and all manner of horse drawn conveniences.
I try to hear the tramp of feat, feel the anger in the air, see the shards of glass bursting from shattered windows. I try to comprehend history's shame and the destruction of genius.
Kay Nielsen was born in Copenhagen in 1886. The date is significant; as it means that his art reached its lofty heights during the dreamstate that was Europe before World War One. It was a fairy-ring which surrounded a group of illustrators whose mythic colors and living textures would not be equaled, hard as the unfolding century might try.
His influences were many and varied: Japanese woodcuts and watercolors, the natural asymmetry of Art Nouveau, the violent shadows and delicate yet immovable lines of Aubrey Beardsley.
But there was another influence at work...he painted frozen stars, snow-drenched landscapes, warm rugs and furs, hair that was thick and braided, with lines as delicate as the filigree cracks in melting ice. There was a chilly Nordic inspiration running throughout his paintings: black mountains, white skies, barefoot princesses, Iron Kings - even a pretty lassie's face is reflected in a pale and frigid pool.
In 1914 a selection of Norwegian folktales was published, under the collective name of 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon'. The title speaks of undisclosed distances and of places beyond the knowledge of the ether, of clouds and planets. These are stories of magic, blood, violence, love, religion and nature. Nielsen provided the illustrations.
'The Blue Belt' tells of a beggar boy and his search for his love, the black-eyed princess of Arabia. During the course of its telling there is transference of power, a morphing of identities, and the merging between man and nature.
This illustration from the story is one of my favorites. In the princess' tall room, graced with a single jeweled lamp and a rich length of tapestry the lovers embrace, kneeling on a cushion stamped with a pattern of roses and tendrils. The fabric is hypnotic, like leaning into a jungle of ferns. Her tiny pink slippers are enticing. The rich decorative passages are balanced against an unadorned wall of black lines. The only warmth in the painting is in the bare arms and the young faces pressed against each other.
'The Lassie And Her Godmother' is Christianity's version of Pandora's Box...the Lassie is told by her foster-mother that she must leave but three rooms of her house alone. But as there is no cure for curiosity, she peeped into each forbidden chamber, and there escaped a Star, the Moon and the Sun.
She was banished.
But she was very lovely, so that when a Prince saw her, he was determined that she would be his queen.
They rode away, their gowns curved and graceful, seeming to grow out of the ground and from the horse's carved musculature. The forest is stylized: they literally ride over a carpet of flowers. The only flesh and blood to be seen is in the prince's shield - the eyes of the bronze face have just flickered open, and it gazes balefully at us, as a warning of the suffering to come.
In the fullness of time, she bears three children; but at each birth, the foster-mother comes to take them from her.
When the parents' dispair could be borne no longer, the foster-mother reappeared with the queen's babies, saying, "Here are your children; now you shall have them again. I am the Virgin Mary, and so grieved as you have been, so grieved was I when you let out sun, and moon and star."
'The Three Princesses of Whiteland' is a tale populated with talking beasts, birds and fish; with swords, trolls, magic snowshoes and three kidnapped princesses buried up to their necks in the snow.
A brave lad rescues them, and marries the princess of his choice as his reward. He loses her but finds his way back with the help of the North Wind and a pair of snowshoes which will carry its owner indefatigably in whatever direction the toes are pointed.
Here he is seen striding forcefully against a wind that is unseen, but still implied...the hero's long blond hair is blown back, the yellow filaments blending with the crimson and gold patterned cape that billows behind him. The wind has piled the snowdrifts high, and his profile is determined, and pale from cold though his brow is dark and unflinching. On one side he carries his sword clutched in one granite fist, on the other a gold shield rests at his shoulder, looking like a moon making its way to the heights of the evening sky. His outfit is a madness of lines, circles, swirls - clasping together to form a spectacular embroidery.
Beauty and melancholy. Cold daylight, Nordic twilight, arctic sunsets, midnight winds. Creatures of legend and of the earth. Rich patterns, empty skies, spaces whose emptiness both reveal and accentuate. A delicate thread of line stitched into impossible textures.
The decoration and details of these illustrations were created from the observation and love of the natural world; but they were also created from ideas imagined when listening in on the tales spun by the mind's whimsy, whispered on a cold winter's night.
Book: Show us one of your favorite works of fiction.
Like Queen Elizabeth I was reputed to have had, I have many favorites. But this is the one that came to mind first:
I own this particular edition, published in 1913. It's displayed on a marble (OK, imitation marble) pedastal by my desk. Many times I'll leave off blogging for a moment to gaze at it fondly.
'Under The Hill' was written by a person I follow so devoutly that I own a book of his published letters (a sure sign of adulation!) - Aubrey Beardsley. It was written in 1896, and is a delicate, naughty, baroque, surreal, erotic tale loosely based on the story of Tannenhauser: the German knight who founded the home of Venus, 'under the hill', and spent a year there, to enjoy and to worship. Honestly, I had to hoist my jaw off the ground at the end of each chapter. Aubrey combined words in a way that couldn't be more delightful: 'slender voices', 'tender gloves', 'malicious breasts', 'golden embrace'...golly!
And this dovetails nicely with the Question of the Day. What author of fiction would I want to write like? Well, and believe me this does not come from vanity - a well I've never plumbed - but I would only want to write like myself. Just like I would only want to look like myself. If I woke up tomorrow with a face like Cleo de Merode's (you didn't really think I'd choose someone living, did you?) or the gentle writing skill of Max Beerbohm...I would be downcast indeed. I have been working on creating my personality since Junior High School, when I realized it was my responsibility alone to build one. I've worked too hard on this to want another's face or talents.
But, for the record, I would have been very joyous indeed to have written things like these:
"...there were buckles of very precious stones set in most strange and esoteric devices; there were ribbons tied and twisted into cunning forms; there were buttons so beautiful that the button-holes might have no pleasure till they closed upon them..."
"Gad Madam; sometimes I believe I have no talent in the world, but to-night I must confess to a touch of the vain mood."
"Would to heaven," he sighed "I might recieve the assurance of a looking-glass before I make my debut!"
One more thing about this book. In addition to writing like this, there are the illustrations. I remember seeing them for the first time: I was so overwhelmed, I had to close the book and walk away. I needed some quiet time, to come to terms with such mastery:
You're just not going to find anything like this book anywhere.
Show us something by your favorite artist.
Submitted by Miss Parker.
That's right.
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Keep 'em coming. |
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And relax.
These three drawings are by Aubrey Beardsley. The first is called 'The Abbe', and it is from the very elegant naughty book that he wrote, 'Under the Hill'. The second is 'The Death of Pierrot', and the last is from the Alexander Pope poem that he illustrated, 'The Rape of the Lock'. It presents the moment when the Baron approaches Belinda, scissors in hand, seeking the lock of her hair.
There is a plaque attached to Beardsley's Brighton home, in Buckingham Road, where he was born, in 1872. It describes him as a 'Master of Line'. Which of course he is. No one, in fact, comes close.
I believe a while ago the Vox Question of the Day was to explain the name of your site. I was highly enthused about that one, but as my computer was acting stupidly I was unable to act on that question.
However. All seems serene for the moment, so here we go. The Cafe Royal was the Main Attraction of Victorian London. It was where you went to eat, drink, socialize and to be seen. Oscar Wilde had his only civil meeting with the Marquis of Queensberry there. He lunched with Bosie there. Max Beerbohm went there; he called the cafe's domino room the 'haunt of intellect and daring' . The artist and wit Will Rothenstein drank vermouth there. W. B. Yeats, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, George Bernard Shaw, Paul Verlaine - AUBREY BEARDSLEY went to the Cafe (no doubt nursing the glass of milk his tuberculosis relegated him to, rather than a dose of grusome, green absinthe). Civil and not-so-civil society attended. It was the epitome of everything that was artistic, ravishing and scandalous in the late 1890's.
The collection of luminous names and voices that that place contained makes my head REEL.
So I honor it here. And it serves as a reminder that I too should be as luminous as I possibly can.
Yes, all at the same time! I'm announcing my first post on Vox and I'm announcing my anger at the look and feel of Los Angeles less than a month before Thanksgiving. I'm probably cleaning my oven too, but that would be patently ridiculous.
Now. See those trees? To the right? All burnished gold and stuff? THAT'S what I'm talking about! Deciduosity rules! But roundabout Southern California all we seem to have are evergreens - the few trees who are good enough to lose their leaves during the Autumn merely become spontaneously Bleak. No brilliant sheafs of orange and yellow.
The only time I've seen a show like that was when I was in England - in Oxford, actually - right around this time of year. The leaves were SCARLET. The sight of that and my nearly getting run over by a student on his bicycle made for a very eventful afternoon.
And don't get me started on the weather - oh, now, just don't! - 80 degrees in October I find offensive. I know that people really suffer through a snowy Autumn and Winter, but this just ain't right. Out of rebellion today I wore a wool skirt, boots and a long-sleeved shirt. I wasn't too comfortable, but I'd like to think that I looked darned snappy.
I'd like to end this screaming session with a mention of a very Vital Book. A picture of it, anyway. Read it. Learn it. Love it.
