Of a Neophyte and how the Black Art was revealed unto him 

Aubrey Beardsley made this monochrome print to illustrate a scandalous novel. The work’s visual style and subject matter connect to late-nineteenth-century interests in the occult and the irrational. The title implies a narrative of initiation. We see a ‘neophyte’ or novice, seemingly guided by the demonic figure labelled 'Asomvel'. The image makes meaning through contrasts: between light and shadow, innocence and experience, the sacred and profane. Beardsley was part of the Aesthetic Movement in England. These artists were committed to ‘art for art’s sake’ and cultivated a style of refined decadence, in opposition to the perceived ugliness of industrial society. The print's themes resonate with contemporaneous anxieties about social and sexual transgression. Further research into the literary and artistic contexts of the 1890s can offer us a deeper understanding of its subversive power. In the end, art’s meaning is bound to the social and institutional conditions of its making.