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Contarini's avatar

Aristophanes' Lysistrata, like all Greek comedy would have been performed with the actors wearing huge artificial phalluses. Greek humor was vulgar and bawdy. Beardsley would have known this, hence the grotesque mashup of Greek costumery and 18th century costumes in his Lysistrata illustrations. When I learned about this detail of the original comedy costumery, it made these bizarre illustrations somewhat more comprehensible, though his desire to suppress them was a healthy impulse. Even as art, they are far from his best work, and we would have been better off if he had made better use of his talent. His late conversion is a happy end to a troubled life.

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Wolliver's avatar

Very interesting. I was actually working on an article about Beardsley myself, and was going to talk about his unfinished Tannhäuser work, as well as many of the points you mentioned, up until his conversion. I feel a little disappointed that someone beat me to it, and that they wrote it so well I don’t have very much to say that’s original.

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