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-1143000-91440000Sexual Evolution in the Art, Life, and Times of Aubrey BeardsleyMarina Bardash NebroArt History 200 – Sexual DifferenceThe turn of the century, or fin de siècle, found 19th century Europe wrought with tension. For the previous one hundred years or so the continent was contending with the economic, political, and societal changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. The former order of hierarchy was shifting, as land was no longer the unit of measure for wealth, and a new bourgeois class was replacing the old aristocracy in prominence and power. Along with the upheaval in class structure, came similar disruptions in other aspects of life; one in particular being gender roles and relations. The Art Nouveau and Decadent movements, with artists and writers such as Arthur Symons, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley, promulgated this fear of corruption and perversion in Victorian English society. The work of Aubrey Beardsley, under proper scrutiny allows for intense examination of his own sexuality and self-image, as well as provides valuable insight into the evolution of gender roles in the society of this time.Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898), one of the most important English artists of the late 19th century, lived a short, twenty-five year life that greatly influenced his artwork. At the young age of seven, Beardsley contracted tuberculosis while away at school, an infection that would plague him for the rest of his life and lead to his death. Throughout his years, he was often incapacitated by his illness, preventing him from completing work and from leading the outlandish decadent life afforded to many of his colleagues. Because of the circle to which he belonged, and due to the unfortunate event of Oscar Wilde’s arrest, Aubrey Beardsley was accused of being “’effeminate, sexless and unclean.’” There were several parodies of Beardsley’s person in numerous publications. In To-day, he can be seen depicted ever so womanly with a dress and gloves, standing effeminately with hands clasped near his lap. In Punch, another publication, the artist uses Beardsley’s own work (Frontispiece for Juvenal), replacing the animal figure with him as the trodden down carrier of a cart full of women all while wearing a dress and flamboyant feathers. Within his group of Decadent peers, however, this view of Beardsley’s sexuality was not the consensus. Oscar Wilde, himself, deemed the young artist “’a monstrous orchid,’” a term which Weintraub explains to be a poke at Beardsley’s “frail… asexuality.” Some of his other friends, including Yeats and Shaw, didn’t believe there was anything explicitly homosexual about him, and even said that there were some instances in which there were “sudden evidences of heterosexuality.” It is Yeats who puts it best when he says that Beardsley’s drawings are “inspired by rage against iniquity.” Because of his childhood illness, Beardsley was unable to be sexually active. He once compared himself to a eunuch to convey his “illness-related or psychosexually caused impotence.” It was because he was unable to experience the pleasure of having a sexual life that Beardsley developed a curiosity surrounding sex and all of the taboos associated with it. Just as the sexual nature of Beardsley’s images were inspired by his own personal life, the grotesque, a motif present in a lot of his work, likewise, can be seen as a self-portrait of an ill and dying young man.Within Beardsley’s lifetime, the changes occurring in the 19th century found women fighting with the push and pull of progress. The traditional Victorian woman was meant to be obedient, submissive, and remain in the domestic sphere. Many restrictions were placed upon them in regards to when and where they could venture, and with whom. As the century progressed, legal advancements in the way of women’s rights challenged their passive role and pushed them, although quite slowly, towards equality. Various acts were passed between the years 1857 and 1882, furthering the power of the married woman. Divorce became more readily available as a tool, and control over property was increased. Education reform also allowed women to reach somewhat equal footing with their male counterparts, giving them opportunities to leave the hearth and enter the workforce. When Aubrey Beardsley’s artwork became popular and well known, women were already seen breaking the traditional norms of a gender segregated society where men populated public spaces and women remained indoors. The concept of the New Woman was already quite infamous and was being taken advantage of by various novelists, essayists, and artists of the Decadent era, Beardsley being only one. The late 19th century New Woman was a complete turnaround of the character of the ideal Victorian woman. The Decadent genre of art was focused on outlandish, flashy, and superfluous desires. Therefore, its depictions of women followed suit, inspiring “reactions ranging from hilarity to disgust and outrage, and [raising] profound fears for the future of sex, class, and race.” Several of the literary characters depicting this new branch of femininity show anarchic tendencies and a desire to “reinterpret the sexual relationship… by heightening sexual consciousness.” This idea of sexual awareness completely opposed the Victorian model of women being sexually repressed and that female “sexuality was based on the claim that they did not lust.” Beardsley’s Title Page to Lysistrata is an example of this New Woman’s quest towards sexual change. The female protagonist of Aristophanes’ Greek comedy stands front and center between two caricatured phalluses. The first notable observation to make is that both examples of the male genitalia are cut off from being fully in the picture plane, relegating man to a less important position. Though Lysistrata acknowledges the large phallus to her left with her hand, her gesture is simply that of resting and doesn’t necessarily show any submissive desire towards the member. She does, however, show a “knowing smile… [Suggesting that she knows] both what the phallus is and the way to use it.” Though Zatlin’s interpretation is valid and promotes the idea of the New Woman being sexually domineering, the character’s face also shows a faint disinterest in the large erection beside her. Instead, she coyly places her right hand on her own genitalia, “the parting of her fingers” showing her taking control of her own sexuality.The improvements to the lives of women brought a threat to 19th century patriarchal supremacy in Victorian culture. In the words of Linda Zatlin, “the notion of dependence in particular helped reinforce the idea that women were inferior,” but with the advent of education reform and the increased availability of divorce for women, the idea of male superiority was tarnished. The emergence of a new type of woman and the connotations that surrounded her would perhaps not have been as harshly received had she not been accompanied with another new figure in society – “the decadent dandy.” This man can be characterized by his preoccupation with his aesthetic appearance, tailored clothes, and fancy living. Culture, high society, and sophistication were of the utmost importance to him, and he shunned the social institution of marriage. The dandy was often interpreted as being effeminate and possibly homosexual. It was believed that the “more dangerous threat” of the coupling of the New Woman and the Decadent Dandy, perhaps more foreboding than the expression of female sexuality, was that the new pair of characters “jeopardized the very survival of the race.” In other words, there was an express fear amongst middle and upper class society, those who were most affected and targeted in the fin de siècle depictions, that “male effeminacy and female mannishness” would prevent the promulgation of future generations, not only due to mutual, sexual disinterest, but also because of the popularization of recreational versus procreative sex in the Decadent circles. Aubrey Beardsley, like the Decadents around him, used the coupling of these two new figures to both accentuate the New Woman’s desire for power and an independent sexuality, while compromising the virility and power of men. He accomplishes this task through grotesque imagery as well as explicit sado-masochistic imagery. In traditional Victorian artwork, the grotesque figure was utilized didactically. As long as the image ridiculed the bizarre character within it, it was morally justified. Another way of understanding the grotesque is to compare it to the common day caricature, an image mocking an infamous element of a person’s countenance or personality. Beardsley did not conform to the moralized standards of Victorian grotesques, and instead, his work’s main “contribution… was the exposure of unacknowledged sexual tension in 1890s England.” In his Comedy-Ballet of Marionettes II, published for the second volume of The Yellow Book, he uses the form of the grotesque to mock voyeuristic men, the deriding being an acknowledgement of taboo sexuality rather than a Victorian moral teaching moment. The small male figure, dressed in outlandish and flamboyant costume, is slight in stature as compared to the women he is ogling. Similar to the male figure in The Lady with the Rose, this one features “broad hips” and a plumed wig, hinting at androgyny, further emasculating the man. It should also be noted that the two women in the Comedy-Ballet scene are a lesbian couple. Lesbians and gender deviating women have always brought fear to patriarchal society, as groups such as these rendered the patriarchy useless; groups such as Diana and her followers and the Amazons, mythological examples, successfully forwent men and were often depicted as being threatening to society. Perhaps there is also significance in the way that Beardsley dressed the female figures in this piece, as the woman on the left is clothed in a long tunic with visible pants underneath. This type of fashion would have been far from modest at the time.The motif of masquerade and disguise is another trope that Beardsley employed to further the New Woman persona. The front cover of the first edition of the Yellow Book features a laughing and boisterous woman in the foreground with a sneering masked man behind her. Bridget Elliot describes her as a “femme fatale who preys on men instead of the reverse.” Though both figures are masked, the harsh black and white utilized by Beardsley further hides the man, as if he has something to hide or wants to linger in the shadows. The woman, however, fills most of the picture plane, and the fact that she is “evidently enjoying such attention also challenged the prevailing view that women’s only sexual desires were of a passive and primarily maternally oriented nature.”11 On the back cover of the same edition of the Yellow Book, Beardsley takes a common snapshot of the 19th century masquerade scene and turns it on its head. Where as the upper class stationed themselves on balconies, usually abstaining from the fancy-dress costumes of the common folk, Beardsley blurs societal and class lines by placing costumed characters in the box seats. He also muddled the line of proper behavior and etiquette, as the upper class mezzanine dwellers were meant to be “more refined and better behaved than the masqueraders.”11 Beardsley is commenting on the falsity of this notion and the hypocrisy of the society.The above examples of emasculating imagery and blurred social lines are perhaps difficult to read and require a deep understanding of the time period and artistic motifs, but Beardsley has several explicit and outstanding depictions of female domination over her male counterpart. In his Frontispiece to Chopin’s Third Ballade, Beardsley illustrates a powerful woman riding a horse that rears up on its hindquarters. Her face shows a determined stare, and her hand holds a malicious whip. Similar depictions of horses usually are accompanied by a strong male power such as Napoleon or Marcus Aurelius, and Beardsley’s choice of placing a woman atop the beast shows an immediate and great deviation from the norm. Viewing the piece through a gender studies lens, however, Beardsley is depicting more than just a woman on a horse; he is depicting female empowerment and domination over man. According to Upstone, “in the 1890s, as now, ‘riding’ was a common slang term for intercourse, while ‘to horse’ was a verb used for the same activity.” The image of the woman on the horse could also be related and linked to prostitutes, known as ‘Horsebreakers,’ who would spend their time in Hyde Park riding horses. Again, the fear among society was that “with sexual power… [A woman] could make demands on her husband for her own pleasure.” In the Frontispiece, however, Beardsley not only acknowledges this fear by associating his woman on a horse with prostitutes and sexual prowess, he also furthers it by showing the acceptance and passivity on the part of the male sexual partner. Peaking out from beneath a billowing skirt and petticoats, Beardsley cleverly draws a small foot. In the article in which Upstone explores synaesthesia, he postulates that this foot was “a nod towards fetishism”20 due to the easy possibility for its mistaken identity as the horse’s erect phallus. Not only is the horse, representing man, being subjugated to the woman’s passion, but it is also enjoying his downfall. Other examples of woman’s explicit dominion over her male counterpart arise in Beardsley’s Lysistrata Defending the Acropolis, where the Athenian women are depicted driving out a grotesque man with flatulence and what is presumably excrement from a chamber pot, and the Frontispiece to John Davidson’s A Full Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, in which a woman is seen whipping a kneeling man.Aubrey Beardsley, taking advantage of the time and place in which he lived, was able to explore his own sexuality through an artistic lens, all the while creating a commentary on contemporary transformations of Victorian gender roles and society. He serves as a great example of an artist who uses his art to express personal struggles with gender and sexuality, perhaps in a more overt and explicit way than most. Belonging to the Decadent movement, he had few qualms about pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable for the public to see, and because of this, he can be seen as a figure that helped further the cause of the sexual “other.”Frontispiece for Juvenal, Aubrey BeardsleyThe Yellow Book, Punch, February 2, 1895Baudry Weirdsley: An Illustration to the Gospel of To-Day, To-Day, September 22, 1894Lysistrata: Title Page, Aubrey Beardsley, 1896Comedy-Ballet of Marionettes II, Yellow Book II, Aubrey Beardsley, July 1894The Lady with the Rose, Aubrey Beardsley, Front cover, Yellow Book I, Aubrey Beardsley, April 1894Back cover, Yellow Book I, Aubrey Beardsley, April 1894Frontispiece to Chopin’s Third Ballade, Aubrey Beardsley, 1895Lysistrata: Defending the Acropolis, Aubrey Beardsley, 1896Frontispiece to John Davidson’s A Full Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, Aubrey Beardsley, 1895BibliographyDowling, Linda. "The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890's." Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 33.4 (1979). Print.Elliot, Bridget J. "Covent Garden Follies: Beardsle'ys Masquerade Images of Posers and Voyeurs." Oxford Art Journal. 9.1 (1986). Print.Harris, Bruce S. The Collected Drawings of Aubrey Beardsley. New York: Bounty Books, 1967. Print.Simon Wilson. "Beardsley, Aubrey." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.Upstone, Robert. "Sado-Masochism and Synaesthesia: Aubrey Beardsle'ys 'Frontispiece to Chopin's Third Ballade'." Burlington Magazine. 145.1204 (2003). Print.Weintraub, Stanley. Beardsley. New York: George Braziller, 1967. Print.Zatlin, Linda. Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Print.Zatlin, Linda. Beardsley, Japonisme, and the Perversion of the Victorian Ideal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print. ................
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