Aestheticism, Decadence and Ink

IMAGINARIUM : An Alternate History of Art

Welcome to Imaginarium: an alternate history of art. A podcast where we delve in to the most obscure parts of art history.  

Hello dear listeners, I’m your host Nadjah, and in this podcast, we try to shed light on less studied parts of the history of art and visual culture. This second episode of the mini-series on the golden age of illustration will be on the world of prints and ink illustrations during the later years of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, and especially we’ll dive into those extremely stylized black and white illustrations with artists such as Aubrey Beardsley, Harry Clarke and Jessie M. King, to really think about how sometimes, we don’t necessarily need color to create compelling art, and how the power of the line can sometimes be all that is needed to create a striking illustratio. We’ll talk about decadent art, aestheticism and ink illustrations. Also, as this is a mini-series on the golden age of illustration and I am trying to organize this somewhat thematically and somewhat chronologically, I’ll encourage you to start by episode one before you listen to this one just to help set the scene and the context of the golden age of illustration, and on this, my very lovely listeners, let’s start. 

For this episode, we’ll set the scenes in the later years of the 19^th century until roughly the beginning of the 1920s. Aestheticism and the art of decadence were some of the many art styles of the art of the later years of the 19^th century. These genres were very peculiar and especially in how they were going against the very strict codes and norms of victorian society. I mean one of the things the victorians are known for is definitely their repression on almost all levels of life. and also the colonialism. But today, we’re mostly talking about their repression. An artistic movement that is a mirror of the social anxieties of a time where social and gender norms were extremely codified and structured, and the slightest deviancy from it was extremely frowned upon. It is the kind of art that artists and writers such as Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde and others created that was thus born in this very specific socio-historical context, and tended to challenge the very rigid system that were put in place. 

Aestheticism, or the Aesthetic movement, as it is also sometimes called, is a genre that wanted to create art for art’s sake. This movement wanted to put forth the act of really taking pleasure in sensualism and visual enjoyment. It was simply to create something beautiful, just for the sake of enjoying beauty and aesthetic pleasure, and not necessarily to attribute a moral or social message onto the art they created, and maybe to disturb a bit the status quo just a bit. As inoffensive as this aim might seem at first glance, this movement deeply shocked the general public of the era and caused a stir in a society that was weirdly bent on not enjoying itself. Even though we’ll now mostly discuss aestheticism when it comes to the art world and visual art, this movement was one that permeated all spheres of life, and was more of a lifestyle rather than simply an art movement. It had an emphasis on personal self-expression, rather than conforming to the societal trends and fashions. 

Aubrey Beardsley, born in 1874, is probably the most well known and notable artists of that specific subcategory of the golden age of illustration. He definitely was not the only one creating in this genre, but he was one of the very first ones, as well as one of the most prominent names of the genre during this time and still to this day, despite his extremely short career. Beardsley is an artist who died extremely young, at only 25 years old, with an illustration career that barely lasted 6 years, and yet he left a mark on art history that truly cannot be erased, he influenced countless of artists after him, and was incredibly significant on the overall trajectory of art history in the last decade of the 19^th century. He was so ridiculously young, and yet so so so ridiculously talented.  He was working especially toward the end of the 19^th century. During those years, he was known as being the embodiment of the spirit of these later years of the 19^th century on the same level as Oscar Wilde, who was a prominent figure of the movement of aestheticism. He even illustrated Oscar Wilde’s theatre play Salome in 1894, and those illustrations really were some of the pieces of art that was really representative of the decadent fin-de-siècle aesthetic. The way Beardsley worked when he illustrated books, or really any illustration that was meant to go hand in hand with a specific text, he created images to complement the text rather than directly illustrate it, which means that he did not necessarily take direct scenes from the book he was commissioned to illustrate, but more so that he created illustration that would fit with the ambiance and atmosphere of the story, with the ~vibes~ and aesthetic of it, which when you think about it, means that you do not necessarily need to have the complete context of the story, to be able to truly and fully understand those illustrations, which is not the case with all of the illustrations of the golden age, as some of them really are an intimate companion to the texts and stories they complete. 

There was some drama here when it comes to this publishing, because Wilde did not like these illustrations, considering them as and I paraphrase here as quote unquote « the naughty scribbles a precious schoolboy makes in the margin of his copybook »  i personally think some of that anger might have to do with the fact that Beardsley might have parodied him in the background of several pieces. who knows. So there was some drama here. Art history is very funny sometimes when you think about the gossip and the feuds between the artists, it is all very entertaining to be quite honest. If I remember correctly there was even a season dedicated to the most popular rivalries in art history in the art history podcast Art Curious, which I also hugely recommend if you want to know more about this subject, and get… the tea about the various rivalries and feuds that existed throughout art history, it is honestly such a fun time.

When it comes to his inspirations, they were artists such as Kate Greenaway and Edward Burne-Jones whom I have already mentioned before in this podcast, as well as the general engouement for Japanese print that was going around during that era in England. I’ll just talk about it briefly just to put everything in context in case you haven't listened to the first season of Imaginarium, or your forgot, but during the second half of the 19^th century, Japan opened its borders to the western world for the first time in a really long time and so a lot of works of art and artifacts made their way for the first time ever in the foreign soils of Europe. There was a lot of interest and passion for these new works of art, with a movement called Japonism that was basically hugely inspired by Japanese art. So this orientalist attitude toward Japanese art was simply in the Air du temps. Being a Japanese art fanatic was simply a normal thing, and western people often love using non-western art for simple consumption or fetishizing, but this is… a story for another day. And thus the flat colors, the woodblock printing techniques as well as the very clean lines were a huge inspiration and influence on the artists of the time, Beardsley was thus not an exception to this. 

He was an extremely productive artist, and as he was also very sick of tuberculosis, it seems like he wanted to make sure he could create and draw as much as possible and have his art given to the world as long as he could. Beardsley created amazing work such as his three hundred illustrations for Le morte d’arthur by Thomas Mallory. I have talked a bit on Beardsley and these particular illustrations of his in the fourth episode of the first season of Imaginarium Arthurian Imagery in Art, but the inspiration for these was deeply from the pre-raphaelite depictions of the medieval era, so these illustrations were created with a romanticized and idealized perception of those tales of chivarly and romance, in the same visual aesthetic that Beardsley came to be known for. 

 He also created a lot of like …., well to be plain, very explicit and erotic art, let’s say. He definitely used his art to provoke, whether the victorian sensibilities about subjects such as sex and gender, or also to critique materialism and corruption. There is a very provocative and subversive quality to some of the work of this artist, some illustrations that are very erotic and yet deeply unserious and full of humor, or wanting to really make a commentary on the society of the era. There was definitely an exploration of the grotesque in his art, in a way that was very unique and definitely shocking to the public of the era, well at least… in public. The victorian in England, are …. a very interesting public to be sure, they had one of the strictest and repressed society i have seen, the need of conformity and uniformity was a really strong pressure during that time, and yet the underbelly of the victorian era is …  well intense to be sure. It was a very peculiar period, with an obvious repression and codified society, but behind closed doors…. happened a lot of things.  

When it comes to Beardsley, he had a very distinct manner of working that he kept secret during all his lived years, and that got uncovered afterwards by his biographer, but basically he was creating the artwork from the sketch and to the final on the same sheet of paper, he used a pencil sketch, and worked with the use of Chinese or Indian ink. He drew with large areas of black and he sometimes he would even experiment with what he called « his black blot method » which was a technique that he consisted in dropping a single blot of ink on the paper and then move it and use it as a starting point or incorporating it in his composition. There is a definite Gothic element that is a very present in the work of Beardsley, as well as influences from Shunga art, which basically refers to japanese erotic art of the 19^th century.  His use of a monochrome art style made the complexity and yet clarity of his line shine even more than if it used color, an addition that would ultimately have probably in my opinion cluttered the pieces with how complex the lines were and how heavily it relied on the complexity of the line, contrarily to the mainstream art in the world of fine arts which was still very much reliant on the side of a very painterly aesthetic. It is a very visually striking art, that utilizes the art of ink illustration a lot, black and white, a high contrast, and it is something that became highly fashionable during those years as it is possible to see by the work of several artists of those later years of the 19^th century until the beginning of the 20^th century and their very alluring ink illustrations. Artists such as Jessie Marion King, Harry Clarke, Annie French and Sidney Herbert Sime were such artists that really made good use of the linework in their art, whether on a more minimalist aesthetic of with a more intricate visuals, it was the first and main artistic tool that they had, it was the starting point of art in itself, but the results they created out of it were so very sophisticated. The appeal of the simple line work became something that really visually struck to this period of transition between the 19^th and 20^th century, as the line work became both more streamlined, and yet, contradictorily, more intricate. 

Harry Clarke is an Irish illustrator of the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century who was mostly known for his illustrations, but also for his particular work in glass stained art. This reflects the new ideas as to what is considered as Real Art, and that not simply being fine arts, but craftsmanship and the decorative arts, for example. We’ll get into this a bit more next episode, as we’ll be talking about art nouveau and art deco, so please anticipate. Clarke was also an important part of the movement of arts and crafts in Ireland, mainly with the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland which lasted from 1894 to 1925. During the 19^th century, there was definitely an Irish cultural movement and Celtic revival that was a way to support and value the national pride of Ireland and its unique identity, especially within the context of english colonization, we do know that colonizing is the english’s favorite pasttime, and of course, this desire was also expressed through the visual culture of the era. There was a desire to make beautiful things by Irish artists, using Irish materials and the historical influences of Celtic metalwork, illuminations and jewelry. Clarke’s stained glass work is incredibly characteristic and different from the more traditional and gothic, and i use this term in its original sense, way of creating stained glass art. The windows he created were haunting and colorful, and were also very gothic, in the way we now understand the word, and he was simply an extremely versatile artist, putting his hands not only on stained glass and illustrations, but bookbinding, textiles and paintings. He really embodied the fundamentals of the arts & crafts when it comes to giving value to craftsmanship as a whole. I admit I personally prefer his illustration work, which I think is honestly so intricately beautiful and yet so creepy, which is a combination I absolutely adore. 

So let’s dive in a bit in his illustrations and commission work. He was working as a glass stained artist, but for this episode, we’re mostly going to dig into his work as an illustrator in the Golden Age, mostly toward the end of it, as he was working during the 1910s and 1920s, before his very early death in 1931, at the still really young age of 41 years old. He illustrated works such as the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen as well as the creepy and gothic tales of Edgar Allan Poe, which to me are genuinely the pinnacle of his body of work.  He was very influenced by the work of Beardsley, but also of Klimt and the symbolism, as well as the newly emerged influence of art déco, which is a subject we will be touching on during the next episode, so please tune in for that one. Albeit his work is visually really close to Beardsley, he uses more fluid lines which fits neatly with the later influence of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. His historical references were mostly from Celtic and pre-christian influences, which brought a very otherworldly mysticism and frankly sometimes almost horrific dimension to the art in some ways. It is not something that is warm and joyful it is something that looks delicate, but it is quasi monstrous, and macabre. 

Clarke had a marked taste for the morbid in his art, which definitely explains why in my opinion, he is to this day one of the most gothic and eeriest illustrators of Edgar Allan Poe, as his art is “swinging from the grotesquely macabre to the sublimely beautiful” as said in the documentary « Harry Clarke: Darkness in Light » by the director John J. Doherty. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the well-known authors of the mid-19^th century. His gothic tales of the supernatural, mental illness, social issues as well as the very dark side of human nature are still. On top of being one of the originator of the detective story, Poe’s writing dealt with the grotesque, the monstrous and the terrifying, and the art that was used to illustrate those stories reflected that. is stories were illustrated by many artists, notably one Aubrey Beardsley that we have mentioned previously, and the themes of Poe’s work fit neatly with the ones that were circulating in the movement of decadence, especially with the moral panic and society’s anxiety about the degeneration of society in British, and generally European culture, around the end of the 19^th century. Of course, the gothic world of Poe lends itself really well to these themes and societal worries, and it is something that the artists of these decades have explored a lot. 

Harry Clarke illustrated Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1919.  His art for these stories is disturbing and eerie, Clarke explores the morbid in a way that is incredibly delicate and beautiful. After all, as Donna Tartt said it best, beauty is terror, and Harry Clarke understands it intrinsically in his illustrations. The use of horror and the gothic, but in an incredible way. Those images do not shy away of using large washes of black ink, to contrast with the characters and scenes that are depicted. Clarke was not the only artist to take dark subjects as a source of inspiration, especially during that era of the esoteric and of an interest in ghost stories, and mummy curses. There was a general fascination with the themes of death and of the supernatural in the later years of the 19^th century and until the 1920s. 

I’ll talk more about this artist in a later episode, but I genuinely would be remiss if i did not at least mention Kay Nielsen’s work, especially his series of illustration for  « the book of death ». Born in 1886, Nielsen is a danish artist that is an incredibly important and prominent artist of the Golden Age of illustration, especially toward the later part of that era more toward the 1910s and the 1920s, and onward. I want to mostly mention and highlight now his very distinctive black and white art and the visible  influences of aestheticism in the style of his lines and the composition of his works of art. This particular series of illustrations for the book of death were first exhibited by Nielsen in London in 1912, shortly after his first arrival in the city and while they were never published in book form, it is still an incredibly beautiful series of narrative illustration and art. It is a series of ten illustrations that followed the story of Pierrot being overwhelmed by sadness over the death of his beloved. These illustrations follow the devastating emotions of loss, grief and mourning and they are striking and heartbreaking. His very intricate line work definitely take inspiration from the artists preceding him and who paved the way for him. The elegance and delicateness of his lines was so lovely and he has such a talent for emotional compositions. I’ll stop here with talking about Kay Nielsen, I know I have not said much about him but fear not my darlings,  this is far from being the last that you will see of him, He will play a bigger role in the overarching story of the golden age of illustration, but I really want to highlight now mostly his art style, and the way he visually fits within the general aesthetic and art of the era, as he definitely belongs with the movements of aestheticism and the black and white art of decadence and symbolism on an aesthetic level.

The illustrations of Sidney Herbert Sime are incredibly lovely, he was an amazing artist of the era who did a lot of paintings as well as illustrations. One of my favorite of his is the illustration of Romance Comes Down Out of Hilly Woodlands, from A Dreamer’s Tales written by  Lord Dusany in 1910. It is a figure intricately and complicatedly covered by ornate fabrics, a huge feathered hat and perched on a unicorn descending down the hills. It is so evocative, mysterious and magical and I am utterly charmed by the illustrations Hime drew for this collection of fantasy short stories. He was a mysterious figure in life, and it is one of these artists we still don’t know much about, but he was often compared to William Blake for the __ of imagination, fantasy, creativity and mystery, especially when it comes to his colorful oil paintings of incredibly vivid landscape on which he drew uncanny and terrifying figures. He is a lesser known figure of the golden age of illustration because unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he absolutely disliked the idea of exhibiting his work, which means that unlike Kay Nielsen or Warwick Goble for example, he had mostly faded into obscurity after the first world war. But most importantly, he seems to have this uncanny to capture the uneasiness of folklore and fantasy, and way to represent the moment in horror where things tumbles from normal into a terrifying situation, a talent that is very precious for an artist. He blended reality and fantasy and married the two to create an incredibly complex pictorial universe. 

Jessie Marion King is a Scottish artist and illustrator known for her delicate pen and ink art and her soft pastel colors. Her work can honestly easily be described as incredibly pretty and .  During her school years at the Glasgow School of Art, she was part of the Glasgow Style, which was the beginning of the form of art nouveau style in scotland during the last years of the 1890s.  She was incredibly versatile and talented, not only in illustrations, but also in textiles, wallpapers and ceramics, to name only a few. The line were soft and delicate and they had the same flowy-ness to it as the art of Beardsley and Clarke, the intricateness and elegance of the lines, which gives to her art an element of careful crafting. She was extremely interested in romantic tales of the king Arthur and the myths of legends, and deeply inspired by the pre-raphaelites, and has one of the most compelling visual depiction of Guinevere of the era. She creates illustrations for the 1904 edition of the The defense of Guenevere and Other Poems by William Morris. When i tell you that everything during that era is Connected ! Her work specifically for this book have a huge intertextual nature to them, as they not only exist individually and visually to the reader, but also communicate and play off the text that they accompany. It is something I will probably talk more in depth in a later episode, but when it comes to book illustrations in general, it is interesting to see how even if they can exist on their own, only as pretty and intricate images, its their  relationship with the text that sublimes their meaning and existence.  Her illustrations of Guinevere connect with a very distinct feeling of Scottish-ness that she had, with the construction of the national identity in a context of colonization and assimilation by the english, as well as the gender politics and turmoil of that specific era. Of course, those worries and issues are thought about and explored in her very specific context as a scottish woman in the late victorian and edwardian era, but art has always been a conduct to explore personal and social issues. It is a way to understand the world and to be understood. By looking at the art of the past, we can understand and analyze what was going on back then, but we can also use that art to kickstart a specific reflexion using our very specific viewpoint. Artistic and art historical analysis is never neutral, it can never be. We all have our own biases and perspectives, and the way we travel this world will hugely influence the way we understand it. So there is no real neutrality nor objectivity, but what we need to do, is consciously adress our biases and perspectives and reassess them constantly, and I hope we can always do that with great empathy and compassion for each other, and with hope of bringing something better to this world, not to perpetuate unfairness, but to promote understanding and nuance. 

No matter if softer or slightly edgier, there is something to be said about the power of the simple line. It can be used to bring either decadence and eroticism, or horror and gothic, or simply to enchant, something about how the artists of the time really __ the use of the line in a new way to create something that can be also as a mean of communication for political uses. In Mexico of the beginning of the 20^th century, there was a vibrant printing culture there from the 1900s up until the 1950s, and it was a culture that wa mainly dedicated to art that was linked to a social cause, used by a leftist government and socialist cause to further their agenda. The use of the print has been used since its inception to disseminate ideas and specific viewpoints on all spectrums of human opinions. The technology of printing making got better and more refined, and especially the one of black and white ink art. As  Mexico has the one oldest printing cultures in latin America, dating all the way back to the 16^th century .   the role of ephemera, on a social and cultural level. Illustrators such as José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel were extremely popular in their time, depicting subjects that were close to the general public, and were appreciated by a wide audience. I have talked about printmaking so far mostly relating to a more casual use of printmaking, to   illustrate books and stories, for entertainment purposes let’s say. But in the print presses of Mexico, the use of the black and white art was meant for a more revolutionary purpose during the first half of the 20^th century. Once again the simple fact that prints and illustration was such a cheap and easily accessible medium and could be easily distributed across the people really explains its role in such as revolutionaries and popular movements, from Mexico to the rest of the revolutionary and independence movements of the first half of the 20^th century. 

The printed medium played a heavy role in the Mexican revolution that ran from 1910 to 1920, and it’s always important to remember that being able to easily access accurate information is a crucial part of moving forward and overthrowing abusive systems.The art of print is one that is easily accessible and straight-forward to understand, especially in a world where image is rapidly becoming the main method of communication. Visual literacy and how images are understood by people is thus a skill that needs to be honed, and images will leap and move across language barriers and illiteracy as a way of understanding what is trying to be said. Sometimes, a simple drawing of black lines will be more efficient at communicating a single concept than words, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Before we go, I put a bunch of relevant resources on today’s subject in the show notes, you have some books as well as some theses and articles that you can read if you maybe want to further your knowledge and read more on the subject. As always, all the relevant images will also be on all of our social platforms @ imaginarium_pod on instagram as well as on twitter. This podcast was written, narrated and produced, by yours truly, Nadjah,  If you want to support this podcast, you can do so on patreon.com-nadjah , n a d j a h . I want to take this opportunity to thank my patrons : may leigh, vilja sala, Trung-Le Nguyen Cappecci, Jak, Sam Hirst, Jenny, Jameson Gregg as well as Nathalie,  thank you so much for making the work i do with this podcast possible.  

On this, I wish you all a very lovely day, evening or night, and I hope to see you again very soon.