ida rubinstein

Ida Rubinstein as Salomé



Vaslav Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein, Scheherazade 1910


Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (5 October 1885 – 20 September 1960) was a famous Russian ballerina, actress, patron and iconic Belle Époque beauty.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia into a wealthy Jewish family, Rubinstein was orphaned at an early age. She had, by the standard of Russian ballet, little formal training. Under the private tutelage of Mikhail Fokine she debuted in 1909 with a single private performance of Oscar Wilde's Salomé, stripping completely nude in the course of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Sergei Diaghilev took her with the Ballets Russes and she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in the Paris season of 1909. This performance was as a powerful spectacle, the costumes were designed by Leon Bakst and the finale inspired Kees van Dongen's Souvenir of the Russian Opera Season 1909.
excerpt take from Ida Rubinstein

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aubrey beardsley

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley 
21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898
An English illustrator and author.  Aubrey Beardsley was the 
most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned 
for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica,
which were the main themes of his later work.  Some of his 
drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured 
enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations were 
on themes of history and mythology.

 





















Beardsley illustrated Oscar Wilde's play Salomé - the play 
eventually premiered in Paris in 1896.  He also produced 
extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a 
deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) 
and worked for magazines like The Savoy and The Studio. 
Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale 
based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser.  
Beardsley's emphasis of the erotic element is present in many 
of his drawings, but nowhere as boldly as in his illustrations for 
Lysistrata which were done for a privately printed edition at a 
time when he was totally out of favor with polite society.