John Vassos’s Salomé

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Yet another Salomé, this 1927 edition being a beautifully stylised Art Deco version by John Vassos (1898–1985), a Greek artist who moved to America in the 1920s. There aren’t many examples of these drawings online, unfortunately, I love to see a complete set of the illustrations. Salomé’s underarm hair is a detail one can’t imagine seeing in many renderings before or after this. Vassos followed Salomé with two more Wilde editions, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1928) and The Harlot’s House and Other Poems (1929). Bud Plant’s page has more about the artist’s life and work and further examples of his monochrome art.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The illustrators archive
The Salomé archive

4 thoughts on “John Vassos’s Salomé”

  1. Hi Billy, and many thanks, those didn’t turn up in my searches. They remind me of stills from an animated film.

    I know Klinger’s work from Jugend but I don’t think I’ve seen his Salomé before. Was that a one-off or part of a series?

  2. you’re very welcome,i love your Salome posts;]
    btw.there’s something wrong with your site,i couldn’t get access to it few times today and yesterday [i wanted to leave comment on that previous post but i gave up]
    Yes,i forgot to mention that i first found Klinger’s illustrations for that play @ http://www.foxrarebooks.com/klinger.html
    and there’s also few more of his works from Deutsche-Kunst und Dekoration @
    http://www.szecesszio.com/linea/2009/11/21/bw-illustrations-at-the-turn-of-the-century-and-japanese-influences/

    b.

  3. Thanks again, that’s given me a new post!

    The site is subject to endless time-outs at the moment due to poor hosting. I maintain everything myself here and since I’m very busy with work most of the time I haven’t had chance to sort out moving the site elsewhere. It’s frustrating for me too, any time things are down is time that my work isn’t being seen.

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