Aubrey Beardsley at Tate Modern, London – until May 25th
The largest exhibition of Aubrey Beardsley drawings for 50 years is on display since March 4th and until May 25th in London’s Tate Modern.
This will be the first exhibition dedicated to this author at Tate since 1923, and the largest display of his original drawings in Europe since the seminal 1966 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert, which triggered a Beardsley revival.
The over 200 works include his celebrated illustrations for Le Morte d’Arthur, Lysistrata and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. It will also show artworks that were key inspirations for Beardsley, including Japanese scrolls and watercolours by Edward Burne-Jones and Gustave Moreau.
Beardsley moved seamlessly between the elegant and the grotesque and shocked and delighted late-Victorian London with his sinuous black and white drawings. He explored the erotic and the elegant, the humorous and grotesque, winning admirers around the world with his distinctive style.
Spanning seven years, this exhibition will cover Beardsley’s intense and prolific career as a draughtsman and illustrator, cut short by his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of 25 (1872-1898). Beardsley’s charismatic persona played a part in the phenomenon that he and his art generated, so much so that the 1890s were dubbed the ‘Beardsley Period’.
This gorgeous retrospective covers pretty much everything Beardsley did, from early medievalist and mythological subjects through to illustrations for The Yellow Book (a quarterly arts publication) and explicit pictures of Ancient Greeks getting frisky. The earlier pieces are similar to Edward Burne-Jones’s work but while Burne-Jones was crushingly bad at depicting feet, Beardsley is king at drawing heels.
If you go to London, visit this exhibit at Tate Modern | Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG.
Watch curator Stephen Calloway and performer Holly James Johnston sit down to tea to discuss dandysim, drag and decadence, as revealed by the life of Aubrey Beardsley.
To get more information in the Tate Modern webpage on the exibit CLICK HERE.