Climax

Aubrey Beardsley’s illustration "The Climax" was commissioned by Oscar Wilde for his play "Salome." The single sided acid-free print was found in an illustrated manuscript of the play at a book sale at the Brookline Public Library in Brookline, Massachusetts.

The play "Salome" was originally written in French but Wilde translated it into English shortly afterwards for the Victorian English audience. The period in England was notoriously exploitative of women. While women were seen as passive and weaker than men, they were also expected to be morally superior and required to conform to self-denying norms. These illusions promoted about women supported their exploitation. Wilde’s play turns this on it’s head and presents a Solome who is the opposite of all that, especially in “the Climax” illustration in which Solome is saying "J'ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan, j'ai baisé ta bouche" ("I have kissed your mouth, Jokannan, I have kissed your mouth”) to the severed head of John the Baptist, which she lustfully holds.

The lamp has several physiological representations of this complex conflict, with the shade cage and bulb offering hints of “vagina dentata”, a ribcage and a clitoris and clitoral hood as well as vagina and penis. The wiring representing veins and arteries, the on-off switch representing a penis or clitoris driving the energy of the physical act turned mortally conflictual by false moralities. The lamp base started as a fragment of a piece of plywood used to board up a Tennessee storefront during a storm in the 1980’s collected by my wife and a long-ago boyfriend, who ultimately drank himself to profound debilitation.