A neighbour remembers the young Spare being impressed by the ceremonial and ritual side of religion at the Anglo-Catholic High Church. He saw cowled and robed figures, which would later appear in his work, though hardly in a flattering light; he liked the incense and the rituals. At the opening of the church the priest wore a garment with a white stole, and there was a hymn to Mary.
Spare excelled at female nudes, and many are, you might say, women in their natural state. The creatures of the natural world, from rats and toads to snakes, lions and birds, make regular appearances, often juxtaposed with his nudes.
He mostly used it for portraits of film stars — after all, were they not the new gods and goddesses of his and our time!? Austin Spare was a tremendous magpie when it came to what images and visual ideas he borrowed to then make inimitably his own — which is what every great artist does. Apart from his astounding flair and skill to make images, he also wrote and largely self-published books, which he naturally illustrated himself.
It was all part of the creation of the Great Work, to build his own cosmology. He did not have a great formal education, but he did have the potential to be a scholar.
They made him a quick buck when he badly needed it, especially when down on his luck towards the end. He was brilliant at it, and no doubt had genuine affection for the characters he portrayed. Forster made it to auction. There was Spare who made exquisite Egyptian pictures, such as the magical stele — created to bring luck, good health and blessings to his friends — or the fine altar-piece of a voluptuous Isis, now in the collection of former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
There was Spare the maker of exquisite books, mostly self-published. There was Spare hermaphroditising men into women, or himself — at least in his drawings — posing as a woman.
There was Spare the Visionary who could only partly achieve his visual ideas because poverty, lack of patrons and status prevented their realisation. Heaven is ecstasy; my consciousness changing and acquiring association.
May I have courage to take from my own superabundance. Alternative Methods Methods. Conventional Methods Methods. Choose by Your Concern. This may accord with the text of the book, Ludovici being a reactionary political commentator. Spare knew Sylvia Pankhurst well, his sister acted as her secretary and they were neighbours. One wonders what may have happened to make Spare so bitter!
There is also an aphorism concerning the nature of belief signed Zos and a line drawing of a naked woman. The female figure portrayed in pencil has wings for arms and is accompanied by glyphs from the Alphabet of Desire indeed her body forms some of the devices plus sigils and the suggestion of different planes sometimes found in his magical stele.
It is again signed and dated There is a pen drawing of Ludovici with vibrationary borders apparently added later. Large format 12ins x 9ins 21pp Limited to copies this copy being number 6 signed by Spare. It was announced that 50 copies would be issued hardbound in vellum with an original vibrationary portrait tipped in whilst the remaining 50 would be issued in card wraps. Rob Ansell in the Select Bibliography to Zos Speaks suggests that the vellum bound copies were far scarcer than this and not all had the original drawing.
This copy is bound in full vellum and has not one but two original drawings tipped in. One enmeshes two forms of Spares signature in decorative calligraphic loops and a vibrationary portrait possibly showing Grace Rogers who assisted him with the publication. The other is a striking profile initialled by Spare. Whilst most copies were bound in card wraps this copy was issued hardbound with full vellum. Effectively the book is therefore signed four times by Spare.
The boards a slightly warped outwards and there is slight discolouration to the covers. Faunesque, It is pencil and watercolour and is Classic Spare having a satyrised sidereal portrait with haunting masks manifesting from energy swirls in the background.
Untitled, Pencil and watercolour wash, 15ins x 9. Signed by Spare and dated It was acquired by the present owner from Abrahamsson. Please note the image shows reflections from the glass protecting the picture. He lived from the dog-end of the Aubrey Beardsley era, stayed loyal to the Edwardian cult of Pan in his satyr pictures, and embraced the heyday of Hollywood Babylon and the social changes beyond, with his post-war portraits of spivs.
Post-war London was a ravaged but atmospheric landscape, with stray cats proliferating in the ruins, wild plants springing up on bomb sites, and live pianists in public houses, where Spare could often be found. Moving to a dank Brixton basement after being bombed, where he looked after a horde of cats, Spare was now in poverty but he never gave up. Needing to survive outside the gallery system, shortly after the war he hit on the idea of holding reasonably priced shows in South London pubs, and mounted three with varying degrees of success.
And when a popular magazine of the Forties, The Leader , ran a human-interest photo feature about Spare as a starving artist, members of the public posted him tins of food. It was this same article that brought Spare to the attention of a young couple named Steffi and Kenneth Grant, and it was in the occult writing of Kenneth Grant that Spare was to be recreated as a dark sorcerer, seduced and initiated in childhood by an elderly witch.
Chiu Shun Hon. Giles Greenway. Piero Tarditi. Jay Pee Bee. Phil Ailleurs. Jeffery Bastien. Darin Sullivan. Trevor Woodhouse.
Salvatore Caputo. Frederic Turner-Hanquart. Ours Noir. Betty Koster. Saar Freedman. Damin Toell. Stefan Karolewicz. Sheer Zed. Matthias Brendel aka neposilla. Marco Rubens.
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