Vamping it up
This is one of the illustrations that Beardsley created for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. Banned for translating biblical characters to the stage, its bold vision of female sexuality would surely have floored the late Victorian establishment.
Female of the species
Beardsley certainly matches Wilde’s nonconformist take on gender roles. Salome is the predator, apparently going in for the kill. Her elegantly frilled and elfin quarry, the “young Syrian” of the Bible story, might easily be a woman – until you see the knees.
Slap and tickle
While Beardsley’s later illustrations for the bawdy classical comedy Lysistrata didn’t stint on X-rated material, here the sex is all implied. Those libidinal art nouveau lines, particularly the sinuous stems of the peacock feathers, have a delicate hint of the whip to them, while the tickling feathers have a phallic quality.
Come dancing
While Wilde went on to dismiss Beardsley’s drawings as “the naughty scribbles a precocious boy makes”, he initially sent him a copy of the play with an inscription informing him that he was the only artist who understood Salome’s dance.
Included in Queer British Art, 1861 to 1967, Tate Britain, SW1, to 1 October
