Illustration to Salome by Oscar Wilde 5 1906 - 1907

Aubrey Beardsley made this illustration to Salome, a play by Oscar Wilde, using pen and ink. You can see the drama between darkness and light, the solid black areas contrasted with the white of the page. It's all about the line, so bold and elegant, defining these figures and their strange, stylized world. I imagine Beardsley hunched over his drawing board, carefully hatching those dense blacks, thinking hard about decadent themes. You can see the influence of Japanese prints in his work, in the strong outlines and flattened perspective, which he mixed with a very modern sensibility. It's like he's whispering secrets, inviting you into a world of forbidden desires. I think about other illustrators like Edward Gorey, who shared that sensibility of drawing on the dark side. Artists are always in dialogue, borrowing and riffing off of one another. Looking at the works, you can see each one makes marks in their own way.