Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque [Hardcover]

Chris Snodgrass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1995

This book analyzes a wide range of Beardsley's most characteristic work. It establishes his assumptions about the underlying nature of his world, and clarifies why so many observers have considered Beardsley's art indispensable to understanding fin-de-si�cle Victorian culture. Beardsley's pictures present a dialogue between seemingly polarized impulses: a desire to scandalize and destabilize the old order, and, equally strong, a need to affirm traditional authority.

Beardsley depicted various grotesque shapes, caricatures, and mutated figures, including foetus/old man, dwarf, Clown, Harlequin, Pierrot, and dandy (the icon of the Decadent "Religion of Art"). Incarnating the fearful contradictions of decadence, these images served as objective correlatives of some "monstrous" metaphysical contortion. His grotesques suggest the impossibility of resolving these contradictions, even as his elegant designs try formalistically to control and recuperate the disfiguration.

As a canonical style, Beardsley's "dandy" sensibility and grotesque caricatures become his means of realigning canonical meaning. Thus, he effects what might be termed a "caricature" of traditional signification. An aesthete devoted to the "Religion of Art", Beardsley, nonetheless, creates a world inescapably "de-formed". He is a Dandy of the Grotesque.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

As we approach the end of our century, our curiosity about the last century's turning point is heightened. One particularly relevant focal point is fin-de-siXcle art, and few artists embody the eccentric and macabre ethos of that era as fully as Aubrey Beardsley. Snodgrass goes into more detail about Beardsley's personality and aesthetics than most people can stand, but her in-depth analysis is quite fascinating, as she covers cultural, sexual, metaphysical, psychological, and artistic facets of Beardsley's sly and contradictory world. Beardsley was precocious: not only was he a musical prodigy and a writer, but he also became a graphic designer of surpassing sophistication and achieved astonishing notoriety by the time he died at age 25 in 1898. As Snodgrass' subtitle suggests, his success was based on paradoxes: a dandy with a penchant for the grotesque, Beardsley managed to combine the bourgeois with the avant-garde, the spiritual with the decadent, the elegant with the ambiguous. His grotesque figures were meant to be disorienting and shocking, corrupt and satiric, and Snodgrass explains why, both in terms of Beardsley himself and in terms of his milieu. Donna Seaman

Review

"This comprehensive examination resolves many of the questions and paradoxes that surround the 'Dandy of the Grotesque' and should become the standard work on Beardsley for years to come."--Choice

"A supremely elegant volume, teeming with countless splendid Beardsley illustrations..."Nineteenth-Century Literature

"Snodgrass's book...performs a most valuable function not only in providing new ways of looking at Beardsley's images, but also in provoking us to think about how properly to theorize the "postmodern" element of modernism."--Victorian Studies

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195090624
• ISBN-13: 978-0195090628
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Art Nouveau

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strongly Recommended for the Serious Beardsleyite, March 20, 2004

By 

Danielle Bennignus - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque (Hardcover)

Firstly, I feel it important to say that this book is not necessarily for the viewer with only a lightweight, or passing, interest in Aubrey Beardsley - it is a very deep, involved study of the man, as well as of his work. That said, I will say that for the Beardsley fanatic, it is an absolute must-read.
I have read many books on Beardsley, and none reach into his work so deeply as this. The book provides a psychological study, as its basis for review of Beardsley's greatest works. While it does focus on the man's self-identification as a dandy, other facets of his complex personality are also brought to attention, and analyzed. Chris Snodgrass approaches such an endeavor with some detachment, but it is quite clear that he is anything but lukewarm towards Aubrey Beardsley and his art - rather, his admiration for both is apparent.
I would not recommend this book as a first read for the budding Beardsleyite - rather, I'd go with Matthew Sturgis' wonderful biography. This book seems to assume that the reader is already intimately familiar with Beardsley's life story, and also intimately familiar with his works. If you fit in this category, please give this book a read - its value cannot be underestimated. An indispensible reference, and never a dull moment.