Illustration to Salome by Oscar Wilde 3
1906-1907
Aubrey Beardsley’s stark black-and-white illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s scandalous play Salome are absolute masterpieces of the Art Nouveau movement. Here, a fashionably elongated figure commands attention in a dramatic, tiered gown that looks like a stack of midnight petals, topped with an impossibly wide hat. Beardsley created these decadent, slightly grotesque images while dying of tuberculosis at just 25 years old. Wilde famously tried to distance himself from the illustrations later, calling them 'too Japanese,' but they remain forever linked to the play's dark, seductive legacy.
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