1 00:00:04,700 --> 00:00:10,320 As a deeply pretentious young man, I was obsessed with late Victoriana. 2 00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:12,920 The gaslit streets of Conan Doyle's London, 3 00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:15,760 the decadent world of Oscar Wilde. 4 00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:21,680 And the shockingly beautiful and beautifully shocking artworks 5 00:00:21,680 --> 00:00:25,800 of Aubrey Beardsley, a young artist who wielded outrage 6 00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:29,240 and self-promotion as adroitly as his pen, 7 00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:33,080 and his uncompromising attitude feels utterly modern. 8 00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:40,640 A 23-year-old boy doing those in the Victorian era is astounding. 9 00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:42,520 They're still kind of "whoa"! 10 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:50,040 The critics were complaining about Mr Beardsley's disgusting woman. 11 00:00:50,040 --> 00:00:54,000 Really plumbed new depths of horror and depravity. 12 00:00:55,680 --> 00:00:58,960 But I was also drawn to his romantically brief life - 13 00:00:58,960 --> 00:01:01,000 dead at 25, 14 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,440 an artistic career of just six years, 15 00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:05,320 cut short by tuberculosis. 16 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:08,760 He knew he didn't have long. 17 00:01:08,760 --> 00:01:11,560 He consciously worked faster. 18 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:14,200 He was aware that if he had his life's work to do, 19 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:15,960 he had to do it quickly. 20 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:20,720 Who could resist a story like this? 21 00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:25,800 The modern cult of Beardsley began here 22 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:28,320 at the Victoria And Albert Museum, 23 00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:32,600 where, in May 1966, the first major retrospective 24 00:01:32,600 --> 00:01:35,320 of his work caused a sensation. 25 00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:41,320 But what isn't so well-known is that, after that landmark 26 00:01:41,320 --> 00:01:45,360 exhibition opened here, the vice squad raided a nearby book shop 27 00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:48,680 after complaints that it was selling copies of Beardsley's risque Salome 28 00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:51,280 drawings for a shilling a pop. 29 00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:54,360 But when quizzed by the coppers, the book-seller replied 30 00:01:54,360 --> 00:01:56,920 that he could see nothing wrong with it, as the originals 31 00:01:56,920 --> 00:01:59,400 were on display up the road. 32 00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:03,200 The police then came here to the V&A to interview the director, 33 00:02:03,200 --> 00:02:07,440 Sir Trenchard Cox, who assured them over a cup of tea 34 00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,480 that Beardsley was art, and not pornography. 35 00:02:10,480 --> 00:02:14,080 The police went quietly on their way. 36 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:19,240 Many of Beardsley's most explicit drawings were indeed on show, 37 00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:21,640 but a few were held back. 38 00:02:21,640 --> 00:02:25,000 And now I've come to take a peek at one of them. 39 00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:31,960 This is The Impatient Adulterer, one of a series of drawings made 40 00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:36,560 by Beardsley to illustrate the Satires of the Roman poet Juvenal. 41 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,880 Beardsley considered it rather a nice picture, 42 00:02:39,880 --> 00:02:44,760 but the curator of the 1966 show deemed it too nasty to exhibit. 43 00:02:48,360 --> 00:02:51,240 This was clearly too much for a swinging '60s audience 44 00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:53,840 and perhaps it's still too much for us now. 45 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:57,360 It's a question that Beardsley's work continues to pose. 46 00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:04,120 From decadent London to the tranquil south of France, 47 00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:07,880 I'm going to follow in Beardsley's fevered footsteps to explore 48 00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:10,960 the world of an artist every bit as strange, 49 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:14,040 perverse and elusive as his art. 50 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:20,760 I want to find out how, against such disabling odds, this extraordinary 51 00:03:20,760 --> 00:03:24,640 young man achieved so much in so short a time. 52 00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:45,760 Where better to begin than with Aubrey Beardsley's 53 00:03:45,760 --> 00:03:50,000 first great work, created when he was just 19? 54 00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:56,920 It's a scene from Act 2 of Siegfried by Richard Wagner, 55 00:03:56,920 --> 00:03:58,800 Beardsley's favourite composer. 56 00:04:00,600 --> 00:04:03,320 It's an extraordinary piece of work. 57 00:04:03,320 --> 00:04:07,360 What we start to expect from Beardsley is great passages 58 00:04:07,360 --> 00:04:10,200 of negative space, particularly white, 59 00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:13,400 but it's also densely packed with detail. 60 00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:19,760 And although it's a sort of bucolic landscape, 61 00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:25,120 it's also completely occupied by sort of monstrous flowers. 62 00:04:25,120 --> 00:04:30,200 There's something, as ever with Beardsley, unhealthy about it, 63 00:04:30,200 --> 00:04:33,000 which I find very appealing! CHUCKLES 64 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:38,000 Beardsley himself must have been hugely proud of this picture 65 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:41,720 because he presented it as a gift to Edward Burne-Jones, 66 00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:45,000 the artist who had perhaps inspired him more than any other 67 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:46,520 as he was growing up. 68 00:04:59,560 --> 00:05:02,400 Young Aubrey's first significant encounter with the work 69 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:06,000 of Burne-Jones was here, at the Church of the Annunciation 70 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:10,480 in Brighton, the town where Beardsley was born in 1872. 71 00:05:16,280 --> 00:05:18,560 INDISTINCT SPEECH 72 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:24,800 BELL TINKLES 73 00:05:27,640 --> 00:05:30,600 Beardsley was very drawn to this stained-glass window, 74 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:32,120 here above the high altar. 75 00:05:32,120 --> 00:05:35,320 It depicts the Annunciation and attendant angels, 76 00:05:35,320 --> 00:05:39,200 and it was designed by Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris - 77 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:42,640 two of the leading English artists of the day. 78 00:05:42,640 --> 00:05:46,240 And I can see how these willowy, androgynous figures influenced 79 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:48,120 Beardsley's own early work. 80 00:05:58,680 --> 00:06:02,120 Gazing up at it in wonder, little could Beardsley have known 81 00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:05,160 that within a few years Burne-Jones would affect the course 82 00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:06,880 of his artistic career. 83 00:06:16,160 --> 00:06:20,200 But I think there's a deeper reason for Beardsley's visits here. 84 00:06:20,200 --> 00:06:23,040 Soon after his seventh birthday, he fell ill with a fever 85 00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:26,800 and persistent cough. The doctor, fearing the worst, 86 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:29,520 detected an ominous creaking on the lungs. 87 00:06:29,520 --> 00:06:30,960 It was tuberculosis. 88 00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:42,200 TB, or consumption, was the great killer of late Victorian England. 89 00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:47,600 There was no known cure, but often death came only after many years 90 00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:51,960 of severe coughing, weight loss and haemorrhages. 91 00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:54,840 The young priest in charge of the church, Father Chapman, 92 00:06:54,840 --> 00:06:57,000 was also tubercular. 93 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:00,200 Aubrey became deeply impressed by the zeal with which Chapman 94 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:03,320 pursued his vocation in the face of disease. 95 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:07,840 Thanks be to God. 96 00:07:08,960 --> 00:07:12,320 With the knowledge that he was then deemed incurable, Beardsley, I think 97 00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:16,480 decided he would have to live his life with - as a friend put it - 98 00:07:16,480 --> 00:07:19,680 "The fatal speed of those who are to die young." 99 00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:33,560 At school in Brighton, Aubrey was too frail for sport and games, 100 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:37,200 but his talent for drawing was soon recognised by his housemaster, 101 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,360 who encouraged an interest in French art and literature. 102 00:07:43,360 --> 00:07:46,400 Beardsley would continue to look overseas for inspiration 103 00:07:46,400 --> 00:07:48,320 as his artistic skills developed. 104 00:07:51,880 --> 00:07:56,040 But Aubrey had barely left school when his tuberculosis erupted 105 00:07:56,040 --> 00:07:58,400 in a sudden attack. 106 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:01,120 When he was 17 and had his first major haemorrhage, 107 00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:04,360 coughing up blood, it would have been clear that he had the adult 108 00:08:04,360 --> 00:08:09,080 form of tuberculosis and he could expect to probably die quite young. 109 00:08:09,080 --> 00:08:12,120 Now, if you look at Victorian representations of consumption 110 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:16,160 in particular, they're very focused on the death bed and the sick bed 111 00:08:16,160 --> 00:08:19,440 as if consumptives are essentially dying people. 112 00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:21,560 But you can imagine how unhelpful that is 113 00:08:21,560 --> 00:08:23,920 for someone who is living with this disease. 114 00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:27,840 How do you build a life for yourself when your culture 115 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:30,560 doesn't have a sense of what that life would look like? 116 00:08:33,040 --> 00:08:36,560 The shock of his haemorrhage transformed Beardsley into a young 117 00:08:36,560 --> 00:08:40,000 man in a hurry, who now sought out every opportunity 118 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:42,680 to further his artistic development. 119 00:08:43,920 --> 00:08:47,680 By this time, he was living with his mother and sister in London, 120 00:08:47,680 --> 00:08:51,880 where he worked as a junior clerk at the Guardian Life Assurance Company. 121 00:08:54,320 --> 00:08:58,440 It was office drudgery by day, incessant drawing by night. 122 00:09:01,760 --> 00:09:06,000 Weekends saw Beardsley and his sister Mabel voraciously bingeing 123 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:09,120 on their favourite paintings by artists like Burne-Jones, 124 00:09:09,120 --> 00:09:13,840 scouring museums, galleries, and even collections in private homes. 125 00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:19,760 In July 1891, just before Beardsley turned 19, there was 126 00:09:19,760 --> 00:09:22,280 a bit of an artistic epiphany for him. 127 00:09:22,280 --> 00:09:25,440 He visited the house of Frederick Leyland 128 00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:29,920 with his sister Mabel, and Leyland's house 129 00:09:29,920 --> 00:09:32,640 probably had one of the most-important collection 130 00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:34,640 of contemporary artists. 131 00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:39,800 And here's a copy of a letter that Beardsley wrote to school friends 132 00:09:39,800 --> 00:09:43,120 recounting this and this visit to Leyland's house. 133 00:09:43,120 --> 00:09:48,040 And that shows Beardsley with his sister Mabel entering this house. 134 00:09:48,040 --> 00:09:52,120 So it's going through the rooms with Leyland's employees 135 00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:54,720 standing there stiffly. Yes, very stiffly. 136 00:09:54,720 --> 00:09:56,240 Gorgeous. 137 00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:59,360 It's a very evocative drawing. It is, yes. 138 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:04,080 Looks a little bit scruffy, but already has the cane of the dandies. 139 00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:07,360 He listed all the paintings that he saw and put exclamation marks 140 00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:11,000 on what he liked, and one of the pictures that he liked 141 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:13,960 was Proserpine by Rossetti. 142 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:18,560 Beardsley's imagination was really fired up, I think, by what he saw, 143 00:10:18,560 --> 00:10:22,920 and he does quite a few drawings with Rossetti femme fatale types, 144 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:25,560 but always in a more subversive way. 145 00:10:28,360 --> 00:10:31,280 Burne-Jones was probably one of the artists 146 00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:34,440 who fascinated Beardsley the most at the time. 147 00:10:34,440 --> 00:10:37,840 I think he was particularly interested in mythology 148 00:10:37,840 --> 00:10:41,680 in Burne-Jones' works, but also in the drapery, 149 00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:45,280 the ethereal quality of his paintings. 150 00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:48,920 This sort of idea that you have a world of imagination. 151 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:51,160 And the compositions as well. 152 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:54,800 The elongated vertical format is something that is also 153 00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:56,640 going to inspire Beardsley. 154 00:11:01,720 --> 00:11:04,600 But Beardsley didn't just seek out paintings, 155 00:11:04,600 --> 00:11:08,560 he shrewdly sought out the painters themselves. 156 00:11:08,560 --> 00:11:12,840 Edward Burne-Jones had begun opening his London studio to the public, 157 00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:17,200 and so, one Sunday afternoon, the 18-year-old Beardsley 158 00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:19,560 went to call on the man he considered 159 00:11:19,560 --> 00:11:22,120 the greatest living artist in Europe. 160 00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:27,320 However, at the door they were told the studio was closed, and no-one 161 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:30,760 would be admitted without a special appointment. 162 00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:35,520 They began to walk away when a voice called out after them, 163 00:11:35,520 --> 00:11:37,240 "Pray, come back. 164 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:40,720 "I couldn't think of letting you go away without seeing the pictures." 165 00:11:44,080 --> 00:11:47,640 It was Burne-Jones himself, who then ushered them in 166 00:11:47,640 --> 00:11:49,880 and proceeded to give Beardsley and his sister 167 00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:51,360 a private tour of his studio. 168 00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:54,360 In an incredibly audacious move, 169 00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:56,680 and one that must have been premeditated, 170 00:11:56,680 --> 00:11:59,880 Beardsley then mentioned that he just happened by the merest chance 171 00:11:59,880 --> 00:12:02,200 to have some of his drawings with him 172 00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:04,680 contained in a small leather portfolio. 173 00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:07,560 Burne-Jones began to look through them before delivering 174 00:12:07,560 --> 00:12:10,760 a verdict that was to change Beardsley's life. 175 00:12:10,760 --> 00:12:12,440 "Mm. 176 00:12:12,440 --> 00:12:17,320 "All full of thought and poetry and imagination," he observed. 177 00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:22,600 "Nature has given you every gift necessary to become a great artist. 178 00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:26,840 "I seldom or never advise anyone to take up art as a profession, 179 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:30,680 "but in your case, I can do nothing else." 180 00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:41,760 And that's how Beardsley presented Burne-Jones with this, the largest 181 00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:44,680 and most intricately worked of his early pen drawings. 182 00:12:46,680 --> 00:12:49,360 He was rightly flattered when Burne-Jones hung it in 183 00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:51,400 pride of place in his drawing room. 184 00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:56,240 But as well as being a gift, the picture now strikes me 185 00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:59,600 as a declaration of arrival, which I'm coming to see 186 00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:04,040 as characteristic of Beardsley's remarkable sense of confidence. 187 00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:08,080 But we also see the beginning of the Beardsley brand because 188 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:12,000 here is one of the first, if not THE first, instances of the famous 189 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:16,040 Beardsley trademark, as he called it - the three-pronged signature. 190 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:24,680 But Siegfried also marked the end of Beardsley's early period. 191 00:13:24,680 --> 00:13:28,640 He was rapidly moving away from the influence of the pre-Raphaelites 192 00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:31,840 to head in an even more striking and original direction. 193 00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:47,920 In the weeks following his encounter with Burne-Jones, 194 00:13:47,920 --> 00:13:51,640 Beardsley settled into a very specific creative routine. 195 00:13:53,200 --> 00:13:56,640 After finishing his day's work, he'd return to the family lodgings, 196 00:13:56,640 --> 00:14:00,400 here, at 59 Charlwood Street, Pimlico. 197 00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:06,480 At a small, plain table, 198 00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:10,560 Beardsley would set out two French Ormolu candlesticks, 199 00:14:10,560 --> 00:14:13,600 a sheaf of medium grade cartridge paper, 200 00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:15,920 pen and ink. 201 00:14:17,960 --> 00:14:23,440 And thereafter, often into the small hours, he'd lose himself 202 00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:26,000 to a gallery of strange new creations, 203 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:28,800 which seemed to startle even Beardsley himself. 204 00:14:30,520 --> 00:14:32,400 "I struck for myself an entirely 205 00:14:32,400 --> 00:14:34,640 "new method of drawing and composition. 206 00:14:34,640 --> 00:14:38,200 "The subjects were quite mad and a little indecent. 207 00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:42,600 "Strange hermaphroditic creatures 208 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,600 "wandering about in Pierrot costumes, or modern dress. 209 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:48,160 "Quite a new world of my imagination." 210 00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:55,400 These pictures strike me as graphic in both senses of the word. 211 00:14:55,400 --> 00:14:57,080 They're explicit, 212 00:14:57,080 --> 00:15:00,760 and they also have a clarity and simplicity of line. 213 00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:07,360 They reflect a dramatic new influence on Beardsley's work. 214 00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:11,120 Japanese art. 215 00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:18,480 On his visit to the Leyland house that summer, Beardsley 216 00:15:18,480 --> 00:15:22,960 had a revelation when he was shown into the Peacock Room, symbolic 217 00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:27,760 of a widespread Japanese craze during the late Victorian period, 218 00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:30,320 following the opening of trade links with the East. 219 00:15:34,080 --> 00:15:35,640 His interest piqued, 220 00:15:35,640 --> 00:15:39,560 Beardsley began to seek out examples of shunga wood-block prints. 221 00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:45,640 He was beguiled not just by their fine lines and flat tones, 222 00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:49,160 but also by their erotic and nightmarish aura. 223 00:15:52,200 --> 00:15:55,840 This is a book that we know from a school friend of Beardsley's 224 00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:58,840 that he knew well, 225 00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:01,840 and it's called Tales From Old Japan. 226 00:16:01,840 --> 00:16:05,080 And you can see echoes here, sort of quite clearly, 227 00:16:05,080 --> 00:16:07,960 of these Japanese folk tales. 228 00:16:07,960 --> 00:16:11,320 Yes, there's an immediate obvious influence, 229 00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:13,120 by the use of the negative space, 230 00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:15,640 the black and white, but then the grotesquery, 231 00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:18,560 but he's immediately synthesised it into his own 232 00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:20,840 Beardsley vision, hasn't he? 233 00:16:20,840 --> 00:16:23,920 And wouldn't have been seen in quite this way, I think, 234 00:16:23,920 --> 00:16:27,080 until the Japanese influence started to come in. 235 00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:30,280 This aspect of Beardsley's work 236 00:16:30,280 --> 00:16:33,600 has long been a source of inspiration for Chris Riddell, 237 00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:37,120 one of today's most-imaginative book illustrators. 238 00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:41,320 I think what's special about Beardsley is his idiosyncrasy. 239 00:16:41,320 --> 00:16:43,880 If you see a Beardsley, you never forget it, 240 00:16:43,880 --> 00:16:46,880 and I think maybe that's because he's so effective 241 00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:51,120 in channelling his influences and making them his own. 242 00:16:51,120 --> 00:16:55,280 And I remember being very struck by his characterisation, 243 00:16:55,280 --> 00:16:59,880 the simplicity of his line. Figures sort of bleed off the page 244 00:16:59,880 --> 00:17:02,920 and sort of spreads almost like a stain to the edges 245 00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:04,560 of the picture play. 246 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:09,280 No-one composes pictures quite like Beardsley. 247 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:13,360 So this has always been one of my favourites - 248 00:17:13,360 --> 00:17:16,080 Incipit Vita Nova: Here Begins The New Life. 249 00:17:16,080 --> 00:17:20,960 Where do you think this rather angry foetus motif comes from? 250 00:17:20,960 --> 00:17:22,680 That's fascinating, isn't it? 251 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:27,160 I think this is his step into a new visual language. 252 00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:31,480 I like to think of this illustration as a farewell to Burne-Jones 253 00:17:31,480 --> 00:17:33,600 and the Pre-Raphaelite profile. 254 00:17:33,600 --> 00:17:37,240 There's something curdled about... Five o'clock shadow! 255 00:17:37,240 --> 00:17:40,880 Oh, yes! And the foetus, I mean, it's interesting. 256 00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:45,920 This is a German book of anatomy that Beardsley 257 00:17:45,920 --> 00:17:50,440 would have encountered in his grandfather's study. 258 00:17:50,440 --> 00:17:56,240 And you can see here these diagrams of a foetus we recognise. 259 00:17:56,240 --> 00:17:58,920 What he's added, I think, is this sort of notion 260 00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:03,240 of absolute sort of implacable fury. 261 00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:07,680 This appears just at the time when Beardsley himself is making 262 00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:10,880 a transition into a new style. 263 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:12,600 He begins a new life. 264 00:18:12,600 --> 00:18:14,560 Absolutely. So he's talking about himself. 265 00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:16,400 And then the foetus recurs, 266 00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:19,320 so he obviously enjoyed using this as a device. 267 00:18:20,680 --> 00:18:24,560 This amazing picture of a birth from the calf of a leg. 268 00:18:24,560 --> 00:18:26,800 What on Earth is going on there? 269 00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:30,960 We can see here a wonderful sort of Beardsley composition. 270 00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:34,440 This has got a very Japanese quality to it 271 00:18:34,440 --> 00:18:38,200 and yet it is, erm, all Beardsley's own. 272 00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:40,200 It's a blood spatter pattern, 273 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:41,720 like a crime scene. 274 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:43,200 That's what it is. Yes. Yes. 275 00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:46,880 And then with sort of areas of rather exquisite beauty 276 00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:49,480 in the detail of the flowers. 277 00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:52,520 And then you get this extraordinary detail, which is the sort of 278 00:18:52,520 --> 00:18:56,840 scissors. The sort of almost medical instrument pointing up 279 00:18:56,840 --> 00:19:00,880 towards the mother, which is sort of, again, 280 00:19:00,880 --> 00:19:02,760 a little sinister detail. 281 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:06,800 And Beardsley is very good, I think, at just throwing us off kilter. 282 00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:14,240 By all accounts, he worked very quickly, in some senses, in terms 283 00:19:14,240 --> 00:19:17,440 of laying down the ink, but was very decisive. 284 00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:21,160 And so he must have had great sort of hand-eye coordination 285 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:23,240 and a very steady hand, I think, 286 00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:26,800 when applying this sort of black ink - and almost with 287 00:19:26,800 --> 00:19:29,520 no correction, which I think is remarkable. 288 00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:38,080 Beardsley's bold new style was matched 289 00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:41,040 by an increasing commercial ambition. 290 00:19:41,040 --> 00:19:43,800 Although he was beginning to sell his works privately 291 00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:46,680 for between five and ten shillings a drawing, 292 00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:50,080 Beardsley decided it was time to besiege the publishers, 293 00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:53,280 as he put it, in order to reach a bigger market. 294 00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:59,000 Once again, Beardsley showed remarkable savvy 295 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:01,280 for someone who was still just 19. 296 00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:05,080 He was, in today's parlance, excellent at networking. 297 00:20:06,120 --> 00:20:09,040 And his big break was just around the corner. 298 00:20:12,520 --> 00:20:16,760 Frederick Evans, the proprietor of Beardsley's favourite book shop, 299 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:21,520 had heard that the publisher JM Dent was seeking an illustrator 300 00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:25,640 for an edition of Sir Thomas Malory's chivalric romance, 301 00:20:25,640 --> 00:20:27,320 Le Morte d'Arthur. 302 00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:34,920 One day, Evans urged Dent to come along to the book shop to see some 303 00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:37,040 examples of Beardsley's work. 304 00:20:37,040 --> 00:20:39,280 And as they look through them, who should walk in 305 00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:43,200 but Beardsley himself on his lunchtime browse. 306 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:46,800 Evans pointed him out. "There's your man," he said. 307 00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:52,600 Dent found Beardsley weird and emaciated, 308 00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:54,160 but sensed, as he wrote later, 309 00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:57,920 "A new breath of life in English black and white drawing," 310 00:20:57,920 --> 00:20:59,640 and he asked Beardsley to provide 311 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:01,760 a specimen illustration for his approval. 312 00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,280 Rightly sensing that angry foetuses might not be quite what Dent 313 00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:11,200 was looking for, Beardsley switched back to his earlier style. 314 00:21:12,960 --> 00:21:16,480 Over the next few days, he worked tirelessly on a drawing depicting 315 00:21:16,480 --> 00:21:19,000 the climax of the Morte d'Arthur - 316 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:21,200 The Achieving Of The Sangreal. 317 00:21:22,680 --> 00:21:25,640 And then...he held his breath. 318 00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:29,800 Any reservations Dent might have had 319 00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:31,920 vanished the moment he saw the picture. 320 00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:36,720 He declared it a masterpiece, and commissioned Beardsley at once. 321 00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:39,120 Beardsley immediately handed in his resignation at 322 00:21:39,120 --> 00:21:41,360 the Guardian Life Insurance Office. 323 00:21:41,360 --> 00:21:44,240 That was that. He was an artist. 324 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:47,280 And, from now on, he was determined to live by his pen. 325 00:21:51,360 --> 00:21:54,320 The sheer scale of the commission was daunting, 326 00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:58,040 but, rather than forcing Beardsley to take a stylistic step back, 327 00:21:58,040 --> 00:22:00,360 Le Morte d'Arthur would actually capture 328 00:22:00,360 --> 00:22:02,560 his continuing artistic evolution. 329 00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:07,360 I've come to look at a rare original copy 330 00:22:07,360 --> 00:22:10,600 with one of the world's leading Beardsley scholars. 331 00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:13,120 KNOCKS ON DOOR 332 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,680 Hello. Hello. Come in. Thank you very much. 333 00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:27,160 What we've got here are the Morte d'Arthur. 334 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:28,400 The two volumes. 335 00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:32,200 He was asked to make over 400 designs for this book. 336 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:37,040 All the way through, it has an amazing array of full pages, 337 00:22:37,040 --> 00:22:39,200 borders, chapter headings. 338 00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,520 It's a staggering piece of work for a basically untried artist. 339 00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:45,600 It's absolutely stunning, isn't it? 340 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:49,200 Probably one of the most elaborate illustrations in the whole book 341 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:50,760 was used as the frontispiece. 342 00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:53,960 And it shows King Arthur having encountered the dragon 343 00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:58,400 that he's laying rather nonchalantly in front of. 344 00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:03,160 But you can see that, in this bit, he has crammed as much complicated 345 00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:05,400 detail as he possibly can. 346 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:08,520 It's a statement of intent, isn't it, I think, in a way? 347 00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:12,720 This is - there couldn't be anything more clean-limbed and wholesome than 348 00:23:12,720 --> 00:23:14,240 the story of Arthur and the Grail. 349 00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:18,120 All the way through, he starts introducing odd characters that had 350 00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:22,040 nothing to do with Mallory and the Knights, and the Middle Ages. 351 00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:24,840 You know, he starts putting Pan and fauns in. 352 00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:28,280 Quite funny, but deeply subversive. 353 00:23:28,280 --> 00:23:31,960 Pagan in the most Christian of texts? Yes - exactly, exactly. 354 00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,840 And I suspect half the time, you know, he's just actually 355 00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:40,640 introducing elements almost for the fun of it, almost to...be confusing. 356 00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:44,040 I think Dent, the publisher, was delighted because people talked 357 00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:48,000 about the book. That's all that matters. It's what matters. 358 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,960 And you can see in the early stages, you know, 359 00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:52,640 they're incredibly elaborate. 360 00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:56,440 You know, he's really throwing his all into it. 361 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:00,800 By the time he's getting on through the book, he's actually having to do 362 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:05,120 six or ten drawings in a night in order to keep up with the deadline. 363 00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:09,160 And he finds ways, in fact, of actually putting slightly less 364 00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,080 intricate effort into it. 365 00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:14,800 And he begins to, sort of, introduce this more-simplified pen technique, 366 00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:19,080 even, which obviously allowed him to fulfil the commission. 367 00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:20,640 This is one of my favourites. 368 00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:23,080 I remember this very well from my teenage years. 369 00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:24,520 Guinevere becoming a nun. 370 00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:29,040 But what I always loved is just this incredible, stark blackness. 371 00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:31,520 Mm. This is what he called his "black blot". 372 00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:34,040 Your eye invents all the detail. 373 00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,920 There's a sort of flatness to them, isn't there? Yes. Yeah. 374 00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:40,120 I mean, absolutely, like Japanese prints that have no shadows, 375 00:24:40,120 --> 00:24:41,160 no perspective. 376 00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:43,720 And this also coincides with something of a revolution 377 00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:45,640 in the printing process. 378 00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,560 Er, absolutely. I can show you... 379 00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,440 Here's an old-fashioned wood-engraved block, 380 00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:53,360 just a block of boxwood. 381 00:24:53,360 --> 00:24:57,000 An artist would have made a design, and then, a different man, 382 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:00,880 a craftsman, would have sat patiently carving away at the block. 383 00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:04,720 So, the old way of reproducing is essentially a copy of a copy? 384 00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:09,400 Someone else's hand is interpreting the artist's work? Absolutely. 385 00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:13,040 Beardsley exploited this extraordinary new technique. 386 00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:14,800 It was called zinc-lined blocks. 387 00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,120 So, basically, the original drawing is photographed and induced 388 00:25:18,120 --> 00:25:19,760 onto a zinc plate. 389 00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,320 This is the new, cutting-edge technology. 390 00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:24,960 This could be done quickly and cheaply. 391 00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,560 But more importantly for Beardsley - 392 00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,880 what you see here is Beardsley's exact line. 393 00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:33,800 It's not interpreted by a wood engraver. 394 00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:37,920 And Beardsley's whole career is actually predicated on the fact that 395 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:42,040 this new process allows his drawings to be rapidly reproduced. 396 00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:44,960 At just 20, 397 00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:48,880 Beardsley had become a new, very modern kind of artist. 398 00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,040 The printing technique created a direct connection between Beardsley 399 00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,240 and his audience. 400 00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:58,320 The illustrations you held in your hand weren't copies of originals 401 00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,960 hanging in galleries or private collections, 402 00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:02,680 but the finished artwork itself. 403 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,320 But the Morte d'Arthur hadn't even been published when, 404 00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:09,280 with characteristic urgency, 405 00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:10,920 Beardsley made his next move. 406 00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:16,760 He was bewitched by London's avant garde, the circle of decadence 407 00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:20,200 and aesthetes of whom Oscar Wilde was the acknowledged king. 408 00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,760 With his frail body and fevered imaginings, 409 00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,520 Beardsley must have thought he would find kindred spirits here. 410 00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:35,760 And in early 1893, he saw a way in to this exclusive group. 411 00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:43,560 A new magazine called The Studio was taking shape. 412 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:47,240 Its publishers wanted it to reflect the latest artistic trends, 413 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,880 and were looking for a new face to give them a sensational send-off. 414 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:54,640 Beardsley was the perfect choice. 415 00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,400 One never forgets one's first review. 416 00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,520 "Success de Scandale", Times Educational Supplement, 1988. 417 00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,760 For Beardsley, it was this. 418 00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:06,800 As well as designing the striking cover, 419 00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:10,160 the publishers chose no less than seven of Beasley's drawings 420 00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:12,080 to accompany their keynote article, 421 00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:14,640 "A New Illustrator: Aubrey Beardsley." 422 00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,880 The article celebrated the presence among us of an artist 423 00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:26,320 whose work is quite as remarkable in its execution as in its invention. 424 00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:30,840 It sealed Beardsley's reputation overnight. 425 00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,480 And it provided him with the springboard to seize 426 00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:35,600 the commission of a lifetime. 427 00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:43,160 He'd been tipped off that an illustrated version of Oscar Wilde's 428 00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,880 banned biblical play, Salome, was to be published. 429 00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:50,520 Beardsley knew he had the credentials to make 430 00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:51,680 an unsolicited pitch. 431 00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,120 With canny acumen - remember, he was still only 20 years old - 432 00:27:57,120 --> 00:27:58,400 he made this drawing. 433 00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:05,600 Beardsley employed all his most Japanesque conventions in depicting 434 00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:10,240 the climax of Wilde's play, where Salome kisses the severed head 435 00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:11,280 of John the Baptist. 436 00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:16,880 Would Wilde see it? Would he like it? 437 00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:18,440 Would he take the bait? 438 00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:28,160 CORK POPS, LAUGHTER 439 00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:30,280 But of course he did. 440 00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:33,400 Beardsley's drawing had cast its spell. 441 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:35,320 Salome was his. 442 00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:41,640 By August 1893, Aubrey Beardsley had more than just his 443 00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:43,320 21st birthday to celebrate. 444 00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:51,040 Wilde's ringing endorsement proved to be his passport to fame. 445 00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:56,320 Beardsley became a regular sight on the giddy social circuit. 446 00:28:56,320 --> 00:29:00,520 New friends, including the artists Max Beerbohm... 447 00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:04,000 ..William Rothenstein... 448 00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,320 ..and Walter Sickert... 449 00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:12,360 ..captured his pale, attenuated figure, immaculately attired, 450 00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:16,200 thanks to his £50 fee from Salome's publisher, John Lane. 451 00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:19,840 GONG CLANGS 452 00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,000 Throwing himself into the commission with what he called a 453 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,120 "mystico-Oriental style," 454 00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:29,760 Beardsley conjured some of the defining images of the decade. 455 00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:32,200 It's a powerful image, isn't it? 456 00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:35,720 I can... It takes me straight back to my...I don't know, 457 00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,640 I was 12 or something, when I first saw these images, 458 00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:41,960 and I would stare at that face and think it's smiling, 459 00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,440 but it's so cruel. Yes. 460 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,080 You know? And that one, as well, the demonic... 461 00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:53,680 It's just amazing tracery of delicate lines, and all these weird, 462 00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:55,840 unhealthy blooms. Yes! 463 00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:58,760 There's so much to look at. Yes! 464 00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:01,920 Even though it's simple and clear and clean, there's actually a lot - 465 00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:05,160 every candle has a little story. 466 00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:07,600 There's a little phallic symbol underneath it. 467 00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:09,720 A little creature holding up that one. 468 00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,520 Well, the fascinating thing is, this is the censored version. 469 00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:16,480 Oh? You're joking. This is the original. Oh, you're right. Here. 470 00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,560 Even with pubic hair, which, as we know, the Victorians really 471 00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:22,320 didn't like at all. 472 00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:24,680 Goodness me. 473 00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:26,760 And our old friend, the foetus, 474 00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:28,800 making a return. Yes! HE LAUGHS 475 00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:35,560 Beardsley completely ignoring the diktats of the text. 476 00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,440 Within his drawings for Salome, Beardsley introduces the 477 00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:45,000 unmistakable figure of Oscar Wilde himself. 478 00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,360 And yet, there seems to be a very fine line 479 00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:50,640 between homage and ridicule. 480 00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:56,960 So, this is The Woman In The Moon. 481 00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:58,840 And we have a very clear... 482 00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:00,840 Oscar. Yeah. ..Oscar here. 483 00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,960 John Lane, the publisher, took fright at it being called 484 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,800 The Man In The Moon, in case there was a sort of a litigious dimension, 485 00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:09,960 changed the title to The Woman In The Moon. 486 00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,840 But then, I remember thinking when I saw that as a teenager that, 487 00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,560 as a caricature of Wilde, it's even crueller calling it that, 488 00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:18,240 cos it appears to be a, sort of, blousy lady. 489 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:20,280 Yes. Very fleshy-faced. 490 00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:25,000 It is a peculiar thing that he would do to someone older 491 00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,240 and more, you know, greater than he at the time. 492 00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,040 It would... Most people would say, "This is the great Oscar Wilde," 493 00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:32,560 and he thought that himself. 494 00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:35,360 And he would presume to do that. 495 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:40,880 He sort of has a sort of crush, or some kind of hero worship. 496 00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:45,120 Very rapidly he turns it into a satire, or... 497 00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:47,120 Bites the hand. ..bites the hand. 498 00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:49,720 We sometimes forget how young he was. 499 00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:53,840 What he actually has is all the pretentiousness of a man of 21, 500 00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:55,400 and all the ingratitude. Yes. 501 00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:01,400 Whether or not Wilde took offence from Beardsley's parody, 502 00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:05,520 he also seems to have taken inspiration from him. 503 00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:09,480 Wilde was influenced by Beardsley to the extent that he saw 504 00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,760 in Beardsley someone with an absolutely cold eye, 505 00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,760 the absolute eye of an artist, who refused to be sentimental. 506 00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:19,880 And if you look at Wilde's work after Salome... 507 00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:26,800 ..he learnt, in meeting Beardsley, that you could get rid of every 508 00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,600 element that appears kindly. 509 00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:34,680 So, for example, Lady Windermere's Fan has melodrama 510 00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:36,640 and sentimentality in it. 511 00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:39,800 But after Beardsley, he writes The Importance Of Being Earnest, 512 00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:43,040 which is crystalline in its absolute perfection, 513 00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:47,440 and has no hint of melodrama, and no hint of sentimentality. 514 00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:50,680 In that sense, it's much closer to Beardsley 515 00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:52,440 than what he'd been doing before. 516 00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:54,640 And maybe he saw in this young man - he thought, 517 00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:56,240 "You know, you can go that far." 518 00:32:56,240 --> 00:32:57,680 There's a wonderful quote. 519 00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,040 A friend catches him scurrying through London in the winter 520 00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:04,600 without a coat. He says, "I don't need one. I am always burning." 521 00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:08,920 And I think it means, both physically and artistically, 522 00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:10,400 he's on fire. 523 00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:18,120 Salome caused precisely the sensation Beardsley had anticipated. 524 00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:22,560 His scandalous drawings easily upstaging Wilde's text 525 00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:24,280 and forcing a wedge between them. 526 00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,440 But Beardsley, never one to play safe, 527 00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:30,520 was already plotting his next move. 528 00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:35,800 As 1894 dawned, he hurried round to the offices of the Bodley Head 529 00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:38,400 to see his publisher, John Lane. 530 00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:42,920 Beardsley proposed a radical idea - 531 00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:47,240 a bold, new quarterly magazine in which all that was daring in art 532 00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,240 and literature could appear, and with a clear demarcation 533 00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,240 between the two - pictures independent of stories, 534 00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:55,360 and stories independent of pictures. 535 00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,360 He even proposed a title, The Yellow Book - 536 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,840 knowing it would call to mind the popular and illicit French novels of 537 00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:03,560 the day, bound in yellow wrappers. 538 00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,080 Seeing the potential this illicit glare of yellow might have, 539 00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:12,720 Lane agreed to back the venture at once, with Beardsley serving 540 00:34:12,720 --> 00:34:14,840 as art editor. 541 00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:18,040 But Beardsley had one stipulation. 542 00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:21,320 Perhaps fearing that Wilde would dominate the new venture, 543 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,920 Beardsley insisted the Wilde be kept out of The Yellow Book. 544 00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,720 His confidence that he no longer needed Wilde was vindicated by 545 00:34:29,720 --> 00:34:32,320 The Yellow Book's instant success, 546 00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,880 selling out its first run of 5,000 copies in under a week. 547 00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,920 The Tate holds some of the original designs that Beardsley produced 548 00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,040 for his new magazine. 549 00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:46,320 This is Beardsley's drawing for the very first number 550 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,040 of The Yellow Book. 551 00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:50,360 These masked revellers have more than a hint of 552 00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:52,160 Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge. 553 00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:53,600 But in Beardsley's hands, 554 00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:56,840 they become by turns erotic and sinister. 555 00:34:56,840 --> 00:35:02,480 His cat-like figure here, with his - or her - sensual lips 556 00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:04,840 and almost drugged expression 557 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,720 seems replete with possibilities. 558 00:35:08,720 --> 00:35:10,200 Not all of them benign. 559 00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:19,600 This picture, known simply as The Fat Woman, was also intended 560 00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,680 for the first number of The Yellow Book. 561 00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,360 I love its bold composition. 562 00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:29,360 The hair, the hat, the feather are almost abstract shapes. 563 00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,400 And then, the stark simplicity of this black wine bottle 564 00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:35,000 against the great expanse of white tablecloth. 565 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,200 Looking back through editions of The Yellow Book, 566 00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:43,960 I'm surprised by just how many of Beardsley's drawings 567 00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:45,400 were of female figures. 568 00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,960 Was he, I wonder, identifying with another group 569 00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:51,680 of late Victorian troublemakers? 570 00:35:56,240 --> 00:35:59,320 I think what Beardsley was doing with inventing this kind of 571 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,560 Beardsley woman was he was taking fears that existed at the time 572 00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:06,800 about the... what was called "the new woman," 573 00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:09,680 which was a new generation of women 574 00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:13,320 who were beginning to demand a lot of the freedoms that their brothers 575 00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:14,760 took for granted. 576 00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,680 So, they were riding bicycles, they were taking jobs. 577 00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,160 So, they had... Typewriting. That sort of thing. 578 00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:23,400 They had a little bit of financial independence. 579 00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:28,240 They had latchkeys, they smoked cigarettes and read racy novels. 580 00:36:28,240 --> 00:36:32,320 And of course, all this provoked a moral panic at the time with people 581 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,080 who really thought, "My goodness, where will this end?" 582 00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,520 Of course, they were sort of proto-feminists. 583 00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:42,400 So, Beardsley took what was actually a type at the time, 584 00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:45,680 and he realised what anxiety it was provoking. 585 00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,800 He gave it a little twist and made her a little bit more sinister. 586 00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:57,920 But I think that his creation of this extraordinary female figure 587 00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:05,840 was much more about him finding a way of expressing himself. 588 00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,600 For me, I think Beardsley is interested in transgression. 589 00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,720 Whether that transgression is a woman out at night by herself 590 00:37:13,720 --> 00:37:17,080 choosing her own book, or whether it's something much more extreme. 591 00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,760 But it all came to bit of a head with volume three of 592 00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:23,360 The Yellow Book, 593 00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:28,040 which shows a woman looking at her reflection in a looking glass, 594 00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,560 and she's putting her make-up on. 595 00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:37,080 This provoked a critic from The World to refer to Mr Beardsley's 596 00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:39,200 "disgusting woman", 597 00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:43,800 and another critic said that it really plumbed new depths of 598 00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:45,640 horror and depravity. 599 00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:50,080 But there is a theory that, because her dressing table mirror 600 00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:53,560 is lit by these two lamps here, which are a little replicas 601 00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:55,960 of street lamps... Street lamps, yes. 602 00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:58,880 Now, see, the idea - well, as a girl, I was always told to put 603 00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,760 my make-up on by the light I would appear in. 604 00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:03,960 So, if you're going to be home during the day, 605 00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:05,320 you put it on by daylight. 606 00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,000 So, the idea that she's putting it on by the light of street lamps 607 00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,800 can only mean that she was planning to spend her evening 608 00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:13,600 walking the streets. 609 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,360 That's quite a subtle code. They got it. Yes. 610 00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:17,560 THEY LAUGH 611 00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:18,920 I was taught the same thing. 612 00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:25,960 Beardsley took fiendish delight in the attacks on The Yellow Book. 613 00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:27,960 "Have you heard of the storm that raged?" 614 00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:30,400 he wrote to the novelist Henry James. 615 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,200 "Most of the thunderbolts fell on my head. 616 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,120 "However, I enjoyed the excitement immensely." 617 00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,920 As a mark of celebrity status, you couldn't beat the pages 618 00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:42,920 of Punch magazine, 619 00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:46,040 which now took delight in lampooning Beardsley's drawings, 620 00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:47,360 like this one. 621 00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:51,720 With their own spoof versions... 622 00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,520 ..signed with names like Danbury Beardless 623 00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:57,760 and Daubaway Weirdsly. 624 00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:07,520 Ever ready to embrace new trends and reach as wide an audience 625 00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:11,560 as possible, Beardsley now fixed his antennae on a rapidly developing 626 00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,600 new medium that he realised would introduce him 627 00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:16,400 to the man in the street. 628 00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:21,600 On his infrequent visits to Paris, 629 00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,800 Beardsley had noticed how French poster design by the likes of 630 00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:27,920 Toulouse-Lautrec and others had transformed the streets into 631 00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,120 veritable open-air galleries. 632 00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:32,960 And now, he hoped to create a similar splash of colour 633 00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:34,240 on the streets of London. 634 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:38,520 "Advertisement," pronounced Beardsley, 635 00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,720 "is an absolute necessity of modern life." 636 00:39:41,720 --> 00:39:43,960 Could he be referring to himself? 637 00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:47,640 Beardsley's posters startled pedestrians and, 638 00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:50,360 like his illustrations, divided the critics, 639 00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,360 which I think would have delighted him. 640 00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,360 Here, I think he continues to suggest the independent 641 00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:57,880 liberated woman of the 1890s. 642 00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:02,040 And yet, no matter what the product, they're still teasingly sensual. 643 00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:05,720 This one, believe it or not, is advertising children's books. 644 00:40:05,720 --> 00:40:09,680 And this one, tempting the pedestrian through a beaded curtain 645 00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:13,280 was said by one reviewer to cause cab horses to shy 646 00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:14,320 at the sight of her. 647 00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,520 Throughout 1894, Beardsley seemed unstoppable. 648 00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,680 Then in early November, a sudden haemorrhage signalled the grim 649 00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:34,800 recurrence of tuberculosis. 650 00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:38,520 It was a severe attack, 651 00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,960 quite possibly exacerbated by his heavy workload. 652 00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:44,360 Doctors ordered his immediate removal to a clinic 653 00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:46,040 in the countryside. 654 00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,520 And it wasn't until early in the New Year that Beardsley felt well 655 00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:51,920 enough to properly pick up his pen again - 656 00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:55,120 only for a very different crisis to erupt. 657 00:40:56,400 --> 00:41:01,680 The arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel on 5th April 1895, 658 00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:05,880 for acts of gross indecency, burst the decadent bubble forever. 659 00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,200 Beardsley was swiftly, and quite unfairly, 660 00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:12,520 caught up in the scandal. 661 00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:17,400 Leaving the hotel in the company of two detectives, 662 00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:20,360 Wilde was seen to be holding a French novel 663 00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:21,720 bound in yellow wrappers. 664 00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:25,640 Believing it to be THE Yellow Book, 665 00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,160 people rapidly took matters into their own hands. 666 00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,120 A crowd assembled here on Vigo Street outside the offices 667 00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:33,920 of the Bodley Head and began to pelt these windows 668 00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:36,680 with mud and cobblestones. 669 00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:40,760 It was an attack on decadent art and all that was deemed immoral. 670 00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:44,120 It was clear from the actions of the angry mob out here - 671 00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:47,240 a "passable little riot", as one commentator called it - 672 00:41:47,240 --> 00:41:50,840 that Wilde's polluting influence was seen to spread like a disease 673 00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:53,640 through the pages of The Yellow Book and, by association, 674 00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:55,640 through Beardsley himself. 675 00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:58,800 Almost overnight, he seemed to face an uncertain future. 676 00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:04,200 Wilde's imprisonment in May 1895 677 00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,080 sent shock waves through artistic London. 678 00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:11,000 One critic accused Beardsley of being sexless and unclean. 679 00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,400 Beardsley had just finished designing this cover for Volume V 680 00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,840 of The Yellow Book, when he learned that his publisher, John Lane, 681 00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:23,400 had fired him. 682 00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,520 He'd finally been living the life of his fantasies, 683 00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:28,520 only to be brutally woken up. 684 00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:32,000 His career was now, quite likely, over. 685 00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,600 But you don't get to achieve all that Aubrey Beardsley had done 686 00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:38,400 by knowing when to give up. 687 00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:52,360 It's said that, as the Wilde scandal exploded, 688 00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,200 600 gentlemen took the boat train to France. 689 00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:58,400 Many were destined for Dieppe - 690 00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:00,680 then something of an artists' colony. 691 00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:08,240 WOMAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH 692 00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:15,280 There, Beardsley and his fellow aesthetes recovered and regrouped. 693 00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,800 They responded to their recent tribulations with a fresh 694 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:23,200 wave of creativity. 695 00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:28,440 And before long, Beardsley was invited to set up a new magazine. 696 00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:43,520 WOMAN GIGGLES 697 00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:45,600 Beardsley seized on the plan. 698 00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,880 Here was a chance to reverse his fortunes, and also perhaps to 699 00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:51,400 showcase a new style in his drawing. 700 00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:55,360 Across a cafe table, he devised the magazine's manifesto, 701 00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:58,800 hoping to appeal to the tastes of the intelligent. 702 00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,520 Beardsley even came up with a name - The Savoy, 703 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:06,120 like the recently-opened hotel, something lavish and modern, 704 00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,880 All well and good, but Beardsley needed a new publisher. 705 00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:14,720 Enter Leonard Smithers, an enterprising but somewhat 706 00:44:14,720 --> 00:44:18,240 disreputable figure whose proud boast was that he would publish 707 00:44:18,240 --> 00:44:20,920 anything the others were afraid to touch. 708 00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:25,880 A sign in his book shop window proclaimed, "Smut is cheap today." 709 00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:32,840 Beardsley has lost none of his desire to provoke and burn bridges. 710 00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,960 His original cover for the first issue of The Savoy depicted a cherub 711 00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,800 vengefully urinating on a copy of The Yellow Book. 712 00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,440 Even Smithers insisted it was changed. 713 00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,120 In September 1895, with his new publication on the way, 714 00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,800 the Wilde scandal dying down a little, 715 00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,560 Beardsley felt able to return to London from his self-imposed exile. 716 00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,240 But his prospects looked altogether more dim. 717 00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:11,120 Undeterred, he started writing and illustrating a novel, 718 00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:12,480 Under The Hill. 719 00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:17,160 A fantasy replete with orgies and bestiality. 720 00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:22,680 And he adopted a new, more ornate drawing style inspired 721 00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:24,880 by 18th-century French prints. 722 00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,720 And I rather think that, at the centre of the story, 723 00:45:27,720 --> 00:45:29,160 he placed himself. 724 00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:35,000 Beardsley's original manuscript, The Abbe Fanfreluche, 725 00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:37,720 was called the Abbe Aubrey. 726 00:45:37,720 --> 00:45:40,920 And it's tempting to imagine this as some sort of 727 00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:42,920 extravagant self-portrait. 728 00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:45,760 What it actually resembles most is a, kind of, 729 00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:48,320 17th-century swagger portrait. 730 00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:52,160 This amazing figure almost filling the frame like 731 00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:54,040 an effulgent butterfly. 732 00:45:55,320 --> 00:46:00,360 With this sensually-lipped arrogance, his tiny hand contained 733 00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:02,040 in the muffler there. 734 00:46:03,720 --> 00:46:08,920 And this aggressively masculine stance is instead replaced 735 00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:12,360 by a completely smooth lower portion. 736 00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:16,400 As is so often the case with Beardsley's pictures, 737 00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:20,760 the central figure is strangely androgynous, rather denatured. 738 00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:27,000 I wonder whether his experience as a man, 739 00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:33,040 whose prospects for...straight...life, 740 00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:36,840 a straight future in the strictest sense - marriage and children - 741 00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:40,440 it's not something he can really expect, even if he wanted it. 742 00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,080 And there's no sign that he did. There's no sign that he had 743 00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:45,520 romantic relationships with anyone of any gender. 744 00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:50,240 But I wonder whether being slightly detached from those expectations, 745 00:46:50,240 --> 00:46:57,120 and being able to defy a lot of the policing of sexuality and gender, 746 00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:00,520 and masculinity at that time, perhaps gave him an opportunity 747 00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:04,720 to think about, "Well, who am I? What am I? Who are my friends? 748 00:47:04,720 --> 00:47:07,920 "Who are the people I care about? Who cares about me? 749 00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:12,200 "Do the labels matter to me" in the same way that they are 750 00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,800 a matter of life and death for other people around him? 751 00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,880 Beardsley now cultivated a new friendship that may have been an 752 00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,960 attempt to address both his personal and financial uncertainties. 753 00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:31,600 He'd become fascinated by a study of homosexuality, or unisexualite, 754 00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:35,080 by a wealthy writer called Marc-Andre Raffalovich. 755 00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,840 Beardsley decided to pay him a visit. 756 00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,800 But was he attracted by Raffalovich's ideas, 757 00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:44,680 or his money? 758 00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:48,840 When they met, Beardsley explained that he was, as he put it, 759 00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:52,000 "in a fix" and appealed to Raffalovich for advice. 760 00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:55,240 As an art patron with a large private income, 761 00:47:55,240 --> 00:47:57,440 the incentives for Beardsley were obvious. 762 00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,760 Raffalovich began buying his work, showering him with gifts of 763 00:48:00,760 --> 00:48:03,240 flowers and books, and chocolates. 764 00:48:03,240 --> 00:48:05,120 They even adopted pet names. 765 00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:07,800 Beardsley signing himself "Telemach" and addressing 766 00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:10,240 Raffalovich as "Mentor". 767 00:48:10,240 --> 00:48:13,480 Raffalovich was then attempting to reconcile 768 00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:17,240 his homosexuality with a growing Catholic belief. 769 00:48:17,240 --> 00:48:20,480 Religious motifs began to appear more frequently 770 00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:22,240 in Beardsley's work. 771 00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:28,320 And he provided this drawing of a hermaphrodite for Raffalovich's 772 00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,880 latest volume of poems. 773 00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:34,520 It's hard not to read something very calculating in 774 00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,640 Beardsley's sudden attachment to Raffalovich, both his financial 775 00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,320 benefactor and spiritual mentor. 776 00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,280 Was Beardsley playing him, embracing 777 00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:46,400 Catholicism merely to ingratiate himself? 778 00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:48,080 Perhaps. 779 00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:51,520 But I think whether it was tactical or not, this burgeoning friendship 780 00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,800 reflected a genuine confusion within Beardsley about his sexuality, 781 00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,200 and also had the very real effect of reawakening a spiritual 782 00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:01,040 need within him. 783 00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:07,720 Beardsley's personal torment seems to have reached a peak 784 00:49:07,720 --> 00:49:10,200 just before his 24th birthday. 785 00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:12,640 In July 1896, 786 00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:17,440 he spent six weeks here in Epsom at the Spread Eagle Hotel, recovering 787 00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:20,880 from yet another severe tuberculosis attack. 788 00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:27,960 Yet this was where he also conjured up his last great work, a series 789 00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:32,840 of graphic images that, once seen, are very hard to forget. 790 00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,880 And here are the resulting drawings. 791 00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:55,800 Eight highly explicit illustrations 792 00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:59,440 for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' bawdy comedy 793 00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:04,000 Lysistrata, in which women refuse their warring husbands sex 794 00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,440 until a peace treaty is signed. 795 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:08,240 With these pictures 796 00:50:08,240 --> 00:50:11,720 Beardsley is exhibiting yet another change of style, this time drawing 797 00:50:11,720 --> 00:50:15,280 on Greek vase painting, which he'd studied in the British Museum. 798 00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:19,800 Depicting figures with giant stylised phalluses, 799 00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:22,880 as sported by ancient Greek actors. 800 00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,080 These are amongst the very first of Beardsley's drawings that I ever 801 00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:29,600 encountered, which drew me to him like a moth to a flame. 802 00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:31,240 I wonder why. 803 00:50:31,240 --> 00:50:35,360 They have lost none of their boldness or impact. 804 00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:38,440 The very definition of "in your face". 805 00:50:41,480 --> 00:50:44,240 But there's an added poignancy of him sitting here. 806 00:50:44,240 --> 00:50:47,120 And that comes from reading the letters that Beardsley wrote at 807 00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:49,640 this period, mostly to Smithers and Raffalovich. 808 00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:51,440 I read them for the first time 809 00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,680 only recently, and was surprised how frank and unabashed they are. 810 00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:57,040 To Smithers, 811 00:50:57,040 --> 00:51:00,600 there is licentious banter and smutty asides. 812 00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:02,720 "..photograph or a model of my prick... 813 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:05,920 "..how widely spread is the doubt as to my sex. 814 00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:08,960 "The cause of it, by the way, was not venereal." 815 00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:11,680 And here, he tries to make light of his illness. 816 00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,280 "The doctor has given me a wondrous medicine which makes my shit 817 00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:16,720 "black and head ache. 818 00:51:16,720 --> 00:51:19,520 "Ammonia, potassium, belladonna and chloroform 819 00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:22,640 "are among its simplest ingredients." 820 00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:26,520 But to Raffalovich, he talks piously of priests and saints 821 00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,240 and confides how really depressed and frightened 822 00:51:29,240 --> 00:51:31,760 he is about his condition. 823 00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:35,000 Looking at these pictures again and reading his letters, I get 824 00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:38,080 a very real sense of Beardsley sitting here alone in this hotel 825 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,320 room, wrestling with his art and his faith. 826 00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:45,120 Smithers and Raffalovich perched like an angel and a devil on each 827 00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:48,000 shoulder, tempting him this way and that, 828 00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:50,840 towards the darkness and the light. 829 00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:57,080 Over the coming months, the haemorrhages became more frequent 830 00:51:57,080 --> 00:52:00,760 and intense and Beardsley made plans to leave England. 831 00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:04,840 "Oh, how tired I am hearing my lung creak all day," 832 00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:08,760 he wrote to Raffalovich, "like a badly made pair of boots." 833 00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,640 In April 1897, accompanied by his mother, 834 00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:19,600 Beardsley set off for the French Riviera. 835 00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:23,760 He was bound for Menton, one of its chief health resorts 836 00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:27,880 where he'd taken rooms here at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. 837 00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:41,800 The proximity to the mountains and the sea gave him a brief 838 00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:45,600 and misleading sense of restored energy. 839 00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:48,840 Beardsley began a new project, telling Smithers with typical 840 00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:51,240 frankness that the coming year would bring either 841 00:52:51,240 --> 00:52:53,640 death or masterpieces. 842 00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:58,240 To illustrate Ben Johnson's satirical play, Volpone, 843 00:52:58,240 --> 00:53:02,200 Beardsley embarked on a series of decorative initials, using pencil 844 00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,760 and wash, but this tonal work was far more exacting 845 00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:07,600 than his line drawings. 846 00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:11,600 The physical exertion took its toll on his frail body. 847 00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:14,960 He could only manage three to four hours a day. 848 00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:42,200 One day, near the seafront, an acquaintance noted how he saw, 849 00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:47,280 for a second, a yellow skeleton fighting an umbrella on the steps 850 00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,680 of a chapel, and suddenly recognised it 851 00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:51,240 to be Beardsley himself. 852 00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:59,760 Now a practising Catholic, seeking out a place of worship, 853 00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:02,880 Beardsley had chanced upon this little chapel which he began 854 00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:04,840 to attend regularly. 855 00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,160 As death tightened its grip on his lungs, 856 00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:17,680 Beardsley clung, with ever-deeper conviction, to his faith 857 00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:19,720 and his rosary beads. 858 00:54:19,720 --> 00:54:21,400 As he sat here, 859 00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,840 I can imagine his mind reaching back to those days in Brighton 860 00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:27,520 when he first sought out the Church of the Annunciation 861 00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:29,160 with its altar window, 862 00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,680 seeing through it all the possibilities of life, 863 00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:35,280 a mere 12 years back, 864 00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,080 and now a lifetime ago. 865 00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:49,360 At the end of January 1898, Beardsley was confined to his bed 866 00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:51,880 with persistent bleeding. 867 00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:55,320 Beardsley had asked his mother to fetch his drawing materials, 868 00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,120 but the strain was too much. Ellen returned to find him with his face 869 00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:02,200 turned to the wall and his gold-nibbed pen embedded 870 00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:06,240 in the floorboards where he'd thrown it in despair. 871 00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:11,160 As the weeks dragged on, Beardsley's sister Mabel came 872 00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:14,960 over from England to help keep vigil by his bedside. 873 00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:18,960 Beardsley then seemingly scrawled one last note to Leonard Smithers, 874 00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:21,480 and it's a desperate final missive. 875 00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:25,240 "Jesus is our Lord and judge. 876 00:55:25,240 --> 00:55:28,520 "Dear friend, I implore you to destroy all copies 877 00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:30,720 "of Lysistrata and bad drawings. 878 00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:33,720 "By all that is holy, 879 00:55:33,720 --> 00:55:36,080 "all obscene drawings. 880 00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:39,120 "Aubrey Beardsley, in my death agony." 881 00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:44,440 Is this, I wonder, a deathbed confession, 882 00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:47,320 a penitent wrestling with their conscience, 883 00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:50,440 surrendering their art to embrace their faith? 884 00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:53,760 Is this Beardsley's attempt to reconcile those two great spheres 885 00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,600 of his life that he always kept separate? 886 00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:01,120 Or was it, in fact, his mother who wrote the note, in an effort 887 00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:03,960 to save her son's posthumous reputation? 888 00:56:13,720 --> 00:56:17,640 Believing his publisher had agreed to his last wish, 889 00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:22,240 Aubrey Beardsley died on 16th March 1898. 890 00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:25,800 He was 25. 891 00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:30,720 He never tried to hide his illness. 892 00:56:30,720 --> 00:56:32,560 He never denied it. 893 00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:34,720 He knew he didn't have long. 894 00:56:34,720 --> 00:56:37,440 Therefore, it must be work, work, work. 895 00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:47,240 He's not like illustrators of his own period. 896 00:56:47,240 --> 00:56:50,480 He has his own personal language that really does stand 897 00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:51,720 the test of time. 898 00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,880 He was keen to make sure that people understood what we now 899 00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:02,480 call his brand. 900 00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:06,720 This idea of what you do and the image you project as being, sort 901 00:57:06,720 --> 00:57:08,400 of, a seamless entity. 902 00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:15,080 You have to recognise his courage and his single-mindedness 903 00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:17,320 is of an order that is very rare. 904 00:57:17,320 --> 00:57:20,840 He raised the bar as to what was possible in terms of simplicity 905 00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:23,600 and purity of line and composition, 906 00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:26,680 but also of impurity of subject matter. 907 00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:40,960 I have a confession to make. 908 00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:43,440 I have been here once before. 909 00:57:43,440 --> 00:57:46,560 But back then, I was a morbid 21-year-old, armed only 910 00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:50,160 with an Interrail ticket and a centre parting, and on something 911 00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:51,960 of a pilgrimage. 912 00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:55,080 Standing here more than 30 years later, I'm more than ever 913 00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:57,960 in awe of this tragic man's genius. 914 00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:01,960 Aubrey Beardsley seemed to live several lifetimes in his brief span, 915 00:58:01,960 --> 00:58:04,040 restlessly innovative, propelled 916 00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:06,440 by his own sense of romantic doom, 917 00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,000 playful, prodigious and perverse, 918 00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,240 almost to the end. 919 00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:15,120 But Beardsley remains more than the poster boy for bedroom decadence. 920 00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:18,040 He was a very great artist, and his mastery of line 921 00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:21,360 and extraordinary imagination shines still.