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BLACK & WHITE: A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley by Brigid Brophy

BLACK & WHITE: A Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley

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Pub Date: April 1st, 1969
Publisher: Stein & Day

The forty-odd page monograph, evenly matched (if not always in absolute correlation with the discussion) by full length reproductions, presents Beardsley as the ""most intensely and electrically erotic artist in the world."" The portrait, achieved through the details of his illustrations, is that of the eclectic exquisite, sexually ambiguous if not castrated, and the beginning and end results of Mama-ism-Mannerism. There is, at the close of the book, along with a small bibliography, a brief chronology of his life which began in 1872 and ended in 1898 but Miss Brophy, as perverse as her subject, claims that he died ""when he was twenty-five."" However she is an appropriately chic cicerone to a figure who is equally modish.