The Art of Aubrey Beardsley is a study about English artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, written by British editor and critic Arthur Symons. The book includes biographical essay and numerous illustrations by the artist. Beardsley's drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.
Beardsley electrified the public with his exotic, sensual drawings. These 221 seductive black-and-white renderings provide graphic designers with a rich selection -- from cover designs and title pages to poster art and headpieces.
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Rich selection of 170 boldly executed black-and-white illustrations ranging from illustrations for Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Balzac's La Comedie Humaine to magazine cover designs, book plates, and more.
This work is a celebration of Beardsley's work, reproducing hundreds of examples of the artist's disturbing and unique synthesis of abstraction and reality. The book also analyzes the cultural transformations that influenced Beardsley's vision.
A Classic Available Again Aristophanes was the greatest writer of ancient Athenian "old comedy," known for its satires of contemporary life and for its broad, often obscene humor. "Lysistrata" was first produced in 411 BC, when the Peloponnesian War had been devastating Greece for 20 years. Most people know the plot: Lysistrata assembles women from all of Greece, and they agree that they will not have sex until the men make peace. Aubrey Beardsley was the greatest and the most controversial Art Nouveau illustrator in England, famous for his illustrations of Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur," Oscar Wilde's "Salome," Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," and for several magazines. Because he was associated with Oscar Wilde, Beardsley lost his job as art editor of a magazine named "The Yellow Book" in 1895, soon after Wilde was arrested for homosexuality. He was approached by Leonard Smithers, a publisher of erotic books, who asked him to illustrate "Lysistrata." His illustrations are very much in the spirit of Aristophanes, as funny as they are obscene. Beardsley converted to Catholicism in 1897, and soon after, he asked Smithers to "destroy all copies of "Lysistrata"" with its "obscene drawings," but Smithers refused. Beardsley died of tuberculosis in 1898, at the age of 26. Smithers initially published "Lysistrata" in a limited edition of one hundred copies. It was reprinted in the 1960s and 1970s, but copies have long been scarce and expensive. Though some may find it offensive, we believe it is valuable to reprint this book, so all the books illustrated by this great artist are readily available.
