Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics

In this illustrated study, Linda Zatlin shows that behind Beardsley's choice of subject-matter, there was more than simply a desire for sexual exploration. There was also a serious protest against social hypocrisy. Setting his work alongside that of F licien Rops, earlier pornographic artists, and the Japanese prints which influenced him, she shows it to have been largely concerned with dismantling Victorian sexual stereotypes. His drawings of men unclothe their lust for power over women; those of women portray their intelligence and their sexuality, in defiance of convention. His depictions of women, and the interior lives he poses on them, are far more varied than those of his men. Exploring the various types revealed in his art, Professor Zatlin argues that gender-relations were Beardsley's overwhelming concern, and his achievement an erotic art which challenged public sexual morality.