Gallery Visit: Aubrey Beardsley Tate 31/07/2020

It’s easy to focus on the scandal, early death and Beardsley’s grotesques, but what struck me as I wandered through Tate Britain’s Beardsley show was the transitional aspect of his technique and subject matter- since it chimes loudly with my interests in technology, meaning and matter; the blurring of concepts/lines – and how that becomes manifested physically. Not only was Beardsley blurring lines relating to gender and sex, but he also has access to new technology, blending drawing and photography with contemporary printing methods which allowed his drawings to be reproduced so beautifully. The Tate blurb (2020) tells us Beardsley was “one of the first artists whose fame came through the easy dissemination of images” and so his story is relevant to me, as I explore imagery more than a century later along with their current transitional outcomes – the ease with which people can make films, post GIFs, create dynamic visual, code-supported content. For me, that is what makes Beardsley’s work salient and long-lived – the combination of subject and technological apparatus, the intra-action between each element.

Before settling on ‘why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers’ as a title for my own BOW (thanks to OCA Catherine Banks for the nudge), I played with the idea of calling the work something along the lines of ‘promiscuity of meaning and matter‘ (2020). Other contenders were, on the morphological promiscuity of meaning and matter, on the morphological fornication of meaning and matter, fornication and morphology with meaning and matter, morphology and fornication with meaning and matter, promiscuity of meaning and matter, meaning and matter’s promiscuity, on meaning and matter’s rampant fornication, and morphology on meaning and matter – you get the picture – promiscuity and morphology. A threat to the old order is often seen as grotesque and morally dangerous – and it seems to me this is what Beardsley has captured and expressed – the affront to an old older – and the terror such an affront is capable of inducing, and the fun he had in the midst of awful illness as he did so.

My mum’s Beardsley book was one of my favourites when younger – and I don’t think it was just the salacious pictures of people farting or the giant genitalia. There is something so enigmatic and evocative about those drawings, reminding me of the way I also loved a cartoon shadow puppet programme I watched. When marks can communicate such a powerful sense of something, I am often captivated.

Worth the wait – and very pleased I got to go in the end after the COVID-delay. My MANGA obsessed son loved the show too and recognised the Japanese influence.

A couple of my favourite plates below:

Field, SJ, 2020. BOW: A4 Developments [blog] Available at: https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/04/02/bow-a4-developments/ Accessed: 15/08/2020

Tate, 2020. Aubrey Beardsley, London, Tate