Born
in 1872, dead at age 25, Aubrey Beardsley looked like Steerpike and like
everyone in this irregular feature drew like no one else. I scratch in pen and
ink and probably because I’m colour-blind so I’ve always loved Beardsley since
long before I even knew his name. Noted as being the darkest of the Art Nouveau
artists he co-founded the Yellow Book and Savoy magazine. He was a contemporary
of Oscar Wilde, and that marvellous time and set that is as mythologized as
anything he drew remains best so through his work.
Beardsley’s art is wonderful,
decadent and evocative. He turned to Catholicism late in his brief life and
recanted much of what he had produced, asking for it to be destroyed.
Nonetheless he kept in character enough for it to be suggested he was rather
closer to his sister than was wise before dying of tuberculosis like a proper
artist. And yet he is immortal, the footprints he has left are rendered like no
other.
But as ever it is the art that speaks,
and why today - then Aubrey Beardsley, we are not worthy.
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