About the drama between good and evil, the editors of the Catholic Encyclopedia are expert; and about Aubrey Beardsley, regularly found at the side of the goddess of indecency fanning her with a gigantic palm leaf, they have this to say: "He was unable to withstand the desire to do clever, mischievou

Art nouveau design, Arts & crafts design, Cartoonish, Erotic, Funny, Huge, Mythic, Perverse, Phallic

It's rare that a biographer has a life more interesting than his own subjects, but Lytton Strachey was a biography waiting to happen. The eleventh child of an Indian civil engineer and the essayist Lady Jane Strachey, Lytton went from being a proper history student at Cambridge to living life as a de

Bloomsbury, Clever, Excessive, Glamour, Perverse, Profane

Most artists, at one time or another, fall out of public favor. But few have fallen so completely, so dramatically, and so fast from the zenith as Michael Powell. From its glory days of the '40s, his career saw a premature burial when British film fell in love with gritty realism in the '60s and '70s

Distorted, Hyperrealism, Perverse, Pioneering, Quirky, Violent

Junichiro Tanizaki wrote erotically and ironically about the dynamics of Japanese culture and the effect of Western influences on tradition. In a style that is delicate and emotionally powerful, Tanizaki's narratives progress through dialogue and careful description without an omniscience narrator. T

Clean, Erotic, Intense, Ironic, Modernist literature, Perverse