Aubrey Beardsley is known as a pioneer of Art Nouveau in the early stage, though most of his famous works were heavily influenced by Decadence Movement and Japanese woodblock print. The presented drawing was the final plate in a series of illustration in 1893 made by Audrey Beardsley for Oscar Wilde’s play, Salome. Its name is “The Climax” and was performed well with black ink on paper, later reproduced with techniques such as block print or photogravure. There are officially 10  illustrations  to present key scenes  and characters in Salome. And “The Cimax” was the final plate, which is also the most well-known one of all 10. At the time of releasing, the commission itself was controversial just as the play Salome that came before.
Specially, during Victorian Era, a time when there were still certain social norms about genders, sexual orientation and moral standards, the series was considered to go against those.     
A summary about Salome
It was during a banquet held by King Heriod and Queen Herodias. While bored to be gazed at, princess Salome went out, met the prisoner John the Baptist and fell in love with him. She wanted to kiss him and was denied as he claimed himself a person of holiness. Later on, King Heriod asked Salome to dance for him, which she refused to at first. Eventually, she made him promise to reward her anything she wanted if she did as he wished, and the King agreed. After the dance, she asked for the head of the baptist and got what she wanted. Receiving John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter, she kissed him on the lips and was crushed to death by soldiers under Queen Herodias’ command.
About The Climax
The Climax is the last picture in an illustration series made for Salome play by Aubrey Beardsley in 1894. During this time, his style was a shift from Aesthetic Movement (1860) to Art Nouveau (1890) and his ideology was from the Decadent Movement. So there were 4 principles of his visual communication: clear composition; symbolism; eroticism; Japanese woodblock print. The following paragraphs will respectively critically argue the meaning and importance of the artwork based on: object type; technical approach; The Climax’s symbolic meaning in Victorian society; comparison to his close colleagues’ works; and other influences and monuments from his time and place.
At  the time of release in 1894, The Climax of Beardsley had raised the importance and social status for illustrators when his works were a breakthrough. On the one hand, Victorians believe sex should not be made public whereas Beardsley usually  exaggerated some erotic features of human  body (figure 19,20) to the point it could be called pornography. illustration at the period was still considered “low art” while the other form of drawing such as oil on canvas (figure 7,8) was highly appreciated as it please Victorians taste. Therefore, when Salome illustrations went against those and became well-known, the social status of illustrators was improved.  
Most importantly, it was the exotic imagery that challenged the ideologies of English population at that time about sexual orientations, fobbiden desires that was against the moral standards as the majority of them did not believe in the gender fluidity and human capabilities. And these conservative ideologies came largely from all types of Bible. Based on a verse in Ephesians 5:22-24, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord”. There was a polarity in gender roles where women should be quiet, well-behaved and obedient and men had more power. And The Climax (figure 1), it ridiculed Victorian definitions about how submissive women should be. The image of a sexually active women that Beardsley showed was an rebellion against conventional gender standards. Another symbolic contrast imagery was also illustrated in the drawing: the flower and the spike. While flowers, usually associated with femininity and women, the flower appeared to erect, hard and visually implied female labia. The fact that the Victorians claimed women have no feelings in intercourse activity, Seidman, S. (1990), and the female climax can be widely interpreted in the artwork is satirical from Beardsley.  Whereas, the spike appearance suggesting penis, which was supposingly strong and firm, fell down on one side, represented weakness, fear, which is considered as negative femininity. 
Death was also a criteria that Beardsley fixated on in many of his works but in a very distinctive way. The fact that Victorian male artists usually express their subjectivity in taking female demise as their inspiration (figure 8). Poe. E (2017) infamously stated that the death of a young woman was a most romantic subject for art. In the meantime, Beardsley showed the daring contrary imagery, a death of a male saint (figure 1, figure 16). Furthermore, the death was enjoyed by a woman. 
Beardsley was also influenced by the Decadent Movement in which the main ideologies were decayed cultural standards and moral decline. So when it came to The Climax, it shows a monstrous action beyond human imagination to execute someone and own a part of them (figure 1, figure 2). Figure 1 shows the exact story where Salome was satisfied when owning John the Baptist’s head. The kiss infer necrophilia, a pervert sexual lust a woman could have and her determination to achieve it. Especially, John was indeed a person of God, a person must save himself from any profanity. And the kiss as well as any harassment from Salome before that had profaned his identification. 
Taking another aspect into account, Beadsley’s style was also very unique when he was affected by Japanese woodblock printing (figure 4,5). The Climax as well as his other illustrations functioned so well as a coloured and grayscale artwork. Even during this time, Japanese had developed their technology to print in full range of colors (figure 3), Beardsley still chose to express his works through black and white. This is very effective as human eyes tend to pick random subjects with bright and warm color and focus on them more. While everything with no saturation as black and white presents the art as a whole. However, the strong contrast (figure 1) still contributed to clear composition for the viewers to identify separated subjects. Many can tell where the lake ends, the area of the sky and key subjects even though the artwork was in black and white.
Walter Crane, who also specialized in black and white decorative illustration (figure 22,23), used to be Beardsley’s colleague during his  time in the Pre-Raphaelite and Morris & Co. In comparison to Crane’s works in which the visual subjects were more complicated in lines and shades (figure 23). Morris’s design was also a cluster of details and words that could not even be read (figure 20). Whereas, Beardsley’s were more simple with a larger area of black ink and the untouched area of paper.
About the ideal image of women, close colleagues of Beardsley such as Morris, Crane or Burne-Jones still embrace the image of an ideal woman in the Bible and please the Victorian audience (figure 7, 24): lady-like, innocent facial expression. While Salome was depicted as monstrous and pervert (figure 1, 2). They put curves of Naturalism into practice in their artworks while there were not many curves and elegant lines in Beardsley’s but straight strokes and pointy features instead (figure 1). 
At the time of releasing, it was a time of high church and Catholicism Revival. It was a time of Gothic Revival as well since the arches were aesthetically representative for the Bible spirit and characters. The demand for churches or church reconstruction increased along with other architectural designs such as stained-glass (figure 24) and decorative furniture. All types of art that time embraced the image of Virgin Mary and long-known laws of society, a man can only be a man and a woman can only be a woman. This is as well a controversial part when traditional gender roles were presented in a blurring way. The facial structure of Salome was very angular and masculine, while John’s was soft and round (figure 2)