The Birthday of Madame Cigale

Beardsley’s creative output consisted almost entirely of drawings, mainly for illustration. His brilliant and singular style stretched the limits of illustration, pushing the medium toward the abstract curvilinear design principles of art nouveau. When wedded to provocative subject matter, the combination of art-historical tribute and irreverence, the rigorous design, and the sensuality that characterizes his illustrations earned him the label “decadent.” Beardsley’s debt to Japanese prints can be seen in The Birthday of Madame Cigale, a frieze of “strange creatures” bearing gifts for Madame Cigale (“cicada” in French). The illustration for True History, by the second-century Greek satirist Lucian, represents the author’s visit to the island of Dreams, where some of the dreams are “long, beautiful, and pleasing: others again are as short and deformed.” In The Mysterious Rose Garden, Beardsley makes use of both Christian and pagan symbols in an ambiguous yet strangely affecting echo of the Annunciation.