Caricature of James McNeill Whistler 

Aubrey Beardsley made this ink drawing, titled “Caricature of James McNeill Whistler,” sometime in the 1890s. Both Whistler and Beardsley were key figures in the Aesthetic movement in Britain, which prized beauty and art for its own sake. Here, Beardsley satirizes Whistler's carefully constructed public image. The figure with the affected pose and prominent monocle mimics Whistler’s signature style, but exaggerates it to the point of absurdity. The butterfly, a motif Whistler often used, becomes a target of ridicule, deflating Whistler's artistic ego. Beardsley, with his unique brand of decadent wit, was critiquing not just an individual but the entire art world and its institutions. Such a critique relies on detailed knowledge of that world. To fully understand the work, we might research the Aesthetic movement, Whistler's persona, and the complex social dynamics of the late 19th-century British art scene. Art is always made in dialogue, and we need to reconstruct the conversation to hear it properly.