Decadence: In Morbid Colours, Art and the Idea of Decadence in the Bohemian Lands 1880–1914
By Otto M. Urban

Born from a bizarre, fin-de-siècle amalgam of dandyism, occultism and Symbolism, Decadence moved the Romantic imagination firmly indoors, into a morbid, mauve-hued interior with Redon on the walls and Poe on the bookshelves. Czech art was well suited to express the Decadent temperament, and In Morbid Colours reveals, for the first time, the incredible cornucopia of fantastical, proto-Surrealist art produced under this rubric between 1880 and 1914. Full of superb color illustrations, it details the work of artists such as Frantisek Bilek, Karel Hlavácek, Frantisek Kavan, Benes Knüpfer, Gabriel Max, Alfons Mucha, Max Pirner, Jan Preisler, Jakub Schikaneder, Hanus Schwaiger, Max Svabinsky and Josef Váchal, as well as artists with ties to Czech art such as Alfred Kubin, August Brömse and Richard Teschner. All of these artists constitute a hitherto-undiscovered world unto themselves, and each is embellished here with superbly-researched commentary and excerpts from contemporaneous Decadent literature.

Artefakt/Arbor Vitae; 2011; Hardcover; 9.5" x 11"; 410 pp; 150 color, 100 b&w, and 50 duotone images; ISBN 9788086300849