On 9 September 2020, I visited the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition held at Tate Britain from 4 March to 20 September 2020. Growing up in the 1970s, there was no escaping these influential prints. My mother had a poster of The Peacock Skirt on the wall at home and I always loved looking at the intricate patterns within the image.
Admittedly, before visiting this exhibition, I hadn’t given much thought to Beardsley’s prints and how they were influenced. When looking at the exhibition guide on the Tate website, I came across this information:
‘Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e) were also an important influence. Beardsley adopted their graphic conventions. His new style included areas of flat pattern contrasted with precisely drawn figures against abstracted or empty backgrounds. Like several artist at this time, he also favoured the distinctive, tall and narrow format of traditional Japanese kakemono scrolls.’
‘In a letter to a friend, Beardsley bragged, ‘I struck for myself an entirely new method of drawing and composition, something suggestive of Japan … The subjects were quite mad and a little indecent.’’
(Aubrey Beardsley – Exhibition Guide | Tate, 2020)
According to the exhibition guide, in the image La Femme Incomprise – Ink on Paper (1892), Beardsley:
‘Borrowed from different Japanese art forms in
this drawing. The woman’s hairstyle, kimono and large and
ferocious cat all seem to derive from Japanese prints. By
contrast, the panels of flat ornament, in which leaves, stems
and lilies stand against a dark background, seem more
closely related to those on Japanese lacquerware. To achieve
this effect, Beardsley worked ‘in reserve’, a technique which
involved leaving the white paper untouched. He titled this ‘The
Misunderstood Woman’ but the wider meaning here is unclear.’
It was that phrase ‘leaving the white paper untouched’ that sparked the same thoughts about the spaces in between. They are just as important as the lines within Beardsley’s prints. This aspect is also reflected in Myoung Ho Lee’s and Tacita Dean’s photographs of trees.
References
Tate. 2020. Aubrey Beardsley – Exhibition Guide | Tate. [online] Available at: <https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/aubrey-beardsley/exhibition-guide> [Accessed 19 October 2020].
Jennie Meadows MA Photography 