Audrey Beardsley

Audrey Beardsley The illustrator Audrey Beardsley was representative of Art Nouveau in England, and as such is partially responsible for it’s failure. “Art Nouveau was closely associated with Aestheticism and literary Decadence” (Greenhalgh, 2000b, 145) and Beardsley’s evocative imagery furthered the sensation of “active immorality” (Greenhalgh, 2000b, 145). J’ai baise ta bouche Iokanaan (figure 9), an illustration for Oscar Wilde’s Salome, depicts the morbid yet beautiful image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist (The Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012). This portrayal corresponds with increased cultural prominence on the changing position and role of women within society. During this time period the idea of the “New Woman”
Here however, artists sought to represent modern life through the reinterpretation of Classical and archaic themes (Greenhalgh, 2000a, 40). Gustav Klimt, as one of the founding members of the Vienna Succession, was essential to the development of Art Nouveau and his work “[explored] tensions within the human psyche by making use of the Classical world in order to relate sensuality and pleasure to melancholia and tragedy” (Greenhalgh, 2000a, 40). In a way similar to Beardsley’s J’ai baise ta bouche Iokanaan (figure 9), Judith I (and the head of Holofernes) (figure 11) looks at a biblical subject as a representation of the “New Woman.” Judith is depicted as simultaneously sensual and perverse, and she gazes at the viewer through half lidded eyes while she is holding the head of Holofernes (Gustav Klimt Museum, 2015). Klimt contrasts pleasure and decadence with pain and tragedy. Judith I (and the head of Holofernes) takes academic subject matter that was common throughout art history and stylizes and abstracts it. The gold decorative pattern flattens the image and disregards academic ideas of space and perspective, while emphasizing the sensation of pleasure and richness (Madsen, 1967,