“The Climax” by Aubrey Beardsley

“The Climax”

For today, the talented Aubrey Beardsley…

“The Climax” is a woodblock print on paper by the English Aesthetic artist, Aubrey Beardsley, from 1894. This is one of 16 images that Beardsley was commissioned to illustrate for Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. These illustrations helped cement Beardsley’s career.

Salomé was a scandalous play in its day; a one act tragedy telling the Biblical story of Salomé, the stepdaughter of King Herod, who attempts to seduce Jokanaan (John the Baptist) who is sitting in prison. She eventually demands a kiss and Jokanaan refuses, swearing that she will never kiss his mouth. Afterwards, King Herod asks Salomé to dance for him. She performs the dance of seven veils. King Herod is so smitten with her performance, that he says that he will give her anything she asks for. She asks for Jokanaan’s head served to her on a silver platter. The play was written in 1891. It was banned in England which did not allow theater productions to depict any biblical characters on stage, so Wilde first published in French in 1893.

This image represents the climax of the play. Salomé has been gifted the severed head of John the Baptist, as she requested. In this image, she floats in the air and holds up the detached head with her two hands. Her hair floats in the air, with Medusa-like tendrils. The moment depicted is just as she kisses the mouth of Jokanaan, right before she says her final line in the play. Blood is dripping from the neck, which falls down towards the bottom of the page and is drawn as nourishing a lily.

Beardsley created his first version of this piece in 1893 which was published in the first issue of The Studio, an art magazine out of London. In the original illustration, Beardsley accompanied the drawing with the very last line from Wilde’s play, “J’ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan, j’ai baisé ta bouche” (which translates to “I have kissed your mouth, Jokannan, I have kissed your mouth”). The Studio retained the rights to the original image, so Beardsley redrew it and made some stylistic variations for the 1894 publication. Interestingly, this piece and several others were omitted from the first publication as they were deemed too controversial. The entire collection by Beardsley was finally published posthumously in 1907 by John Lane in Salome: A Tragedy in One Act. The entire book can be viewed online here.

The critics loved Beardsley’s work. This praise actually upset Oscar Wilde himself, who thought the illustrations were getting more notice than the play they were meant to illustrate. Wilde said “I admire, I do not like Aubrey’s illustrations. They are too Japanese, while my play is Byzantine”. This commission work contained some risqué illustrations which earned Beardsley a name and reputation. His use of lines and stark contrasts combined with his more erotic subjects helped further is dark reputation.

Original woodblock prints of “The Climax” are curated in public collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in the United States and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

For more on Aubrey Beardsley, please visit his short biography here.

You can find more artists to learn about here.