Background

Spare was born in London, United Kingdom, on December 30, 1886, into a working-class family. His father, Philip Newton Spare, came to London from Yorkshire in 1978 as he gained employment with the City of London Police. Austin Spare's mother, Eliza Osman, was born in Devon; she was the daughter of a Royal Marine.

Eliza Osman married Philip Newton Spare at St Bride's Church in Fleet Street in December 1879. The couple moved into a tenement called Bloomfield House on Bloomfield Place, King Street in Snow Hill. It was inhabited by the families of police officers, clerks, drivers, and market workers.

The Spare's first child to survive was Austin's brother John Newton Spare, born in 1882. Then his other brother, William Herbert Spare, was born in 1883 and Susan Ann Spare in 1885. Austin Spare also had a younger sister Ellen V. Spare, she was born in 1900.

Education

Austin Spare took an early interest in art. At first, he attended the school attached to St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, an Anglican church in the City of London, starting in 1891. In 1894, when Spare was seven, his family moved from Smithfield to Kennington, South London. There, Spare became a pupil of St. Agnes School, attached to a renowned High Anglican church.

In later life, Spare claimed to have met an elderly woman, Mrs Patterson (known as "Witch Patterson") in the 1890s. That old lady claimed to be a descended of Salem witches. That's how Austin Spare described her, "she lived to be a hundred and one and used to tell my fortune when I was quite young. She never accepted money. She was so accurate and so detailed in her forecast of future events that everybody was very impressed with her. She was married to a doctor; but she had gipsy blood in her veins. Full of love and kindness towards everybody, she was like a child. She lived in a very tough neighbourhood, and the roughest characters respected her." Mrs Patterson seduced him and became his first teacher of practical magic. Although later biographer Phil Baker has noted that there is "very little evidence" that she was a real person, rather his fictional invention. However, Austin Spare, who did not get on well with his real mother, referred to Patterson as his "second mother" or even "witch-mother".

From about the age of 12, Austin Spare started taking evening classes at Lambeth School of Art (now the City and Guilds of London Art School), studying under the direction of Philip Connard. In 1900, Spare left St. Agnes School and continued to attend the Lambeth School of Art in the evenings.

When Sir William Blake Richmond and FH Richmond RBA came across some of Spare's drawings, they were impressed by his talent and recommended him for a scholarship to the Royal College of Art (RCA) in South Kensington, which the young artist received in 1903.

However, Austin Spare soon became dissatisfied with the teaching he received there; he began to skip his classes and was disciplined by his tutors as a result. Inspired by the works of Edmund Sullivan, Charles Ricketts, George Frederick Watts and Aubrey Beardsley, he began to paint focusing on clear lines, which was in devastating contrast to the College's emphasis on shading.

Around this time, he began dressing in offbeat and flamboyant garments and became extremely popular with other students at the college. He developed a particularly strong friendship with Sylvia Pankhurst, a prominent Suffragette and leftist campaigner.

In 1905 Spare left the Royal College of Art without having received any qualifications.

Career

Spare received his first employment at Sir Joseph Causton and Sons, a company that focused on the design of posters, in 1900. Nine months later, he quit this job and began as a designer at Powell's glass-working business.

In May 1904, Austin Spare held his first exhibition in the foyer of the Newington Public Library. Those paintings illustrated many of the themes that would continue to inspire him throughout his life. Spare's father stealthily submitted two of his son's drawings to the Royal Academy, one of which, a design for a bookplate, was chosen to exhibit at that year's prestigious summer exhibition. He became the youngest artist to ever exhibit at the show. In 1905 he once again exhibited his artworks at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition, displaying a drawing known as The Resurrection of Zoroaster.

Spare started to work as a bookplate designer and illustrator in 1906. He received his first commission to produce illustrations for Ethel Rolt Wheeler's Behind the Veil. In subsequent years he also illustrated Charles Grindrod's The Shadow of the Raggedstone (1909) and Justice Darling's On the Oxford Circuit and other Verses (1909).

In 1906 Austin Spare published his first political cartoon, which appeared in the pages of The Morning Leader newspaper. It was a satire on the use of Chinese wage slave labourers in British South Africa. Concurrently, he devoted much of his time to illustrating a second publication, A Book of Satyrs, which comprised of a series of nine satirical pictures criticizing such institutions as politics and the clergy. An introduction to the book was written by Scottish painter James Guthrie.

Spare created one of his most significant illustrations, a drawing titled Portrait of the Artist, in 1907. It depicted the artist sitting behind a table covered in various bric-a-brac. His later biographer Phil Baker would later characterise it as "a remarkable work of Edwardian black-and-white art" which was "far more confidently drawn and better finished than the work of the Satyrs."

In October 1907 Austin Spare held his first major exhibition, entitled "Black and White Drawings by Austin O Spare", which was held at the Bruton Gallery in London's West End. One of those interested in Spare's oeuvre was Aleister Crowley, an occultist who had founded the religion of Thelema in 1904. Crowley became a patron and champion of Spare's art, which he proclaimed to be a message from the Divine. Spare later submitted several drawings for publication in Crowley's Thelemite journal, The Equinox, receiving payment in the form of an expensive ritual robe.

During this period of time, Spare's major patron was the wealthy property developer Pickford Waller. Among his other admirers were Lord Howard de Walden, Desmond Coke, Ralph Strauss, and Charles Ricketts. The painter became particularly popular among avant-garde homosexual circles in Edwardian London; as a result, several well-known gay men became his patrons. Spare became close friends with the same-sex couple Marc-André Raffalovich and John Gray. Gray then introduced Austin Spare to the Irish novelist George Moore, whom he would also subsequently befriend.

Around 1910, Austin Spare produced illustrations for The Starlit Mire, a book of epigrams written by James Betram and F. Russell. Those illustrations once more proved his special interest in the abnormal and the grotesque. Another notable artwork from this period was his illustration known as A Fantasy.

Over a period of several years, Spare started his work on The Book of Pleasure (Self Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy, which he published in 1913. Examining his own mystical ideas regarding the human being and their unconscious mind, the book also discussed magic and the use of sigils.

Spare had the first one-man exhibition of his work in July 1914; it was held at the Baillie Gallery in Bruton St, London. At the same time, the artist joined the staff of a newly launched popular art magazine Colour, actively contributing to its early issues.

Soon, Spare decide to found his own art magazine, Form, suggesting the idea to the publisher John Lane, who had formerly produced The Yellow Book, an influential periodical that had appeared from 1894 to 1897. Spare was joined by the etcher Frederick Carter, who became a co-editor and used the pseudonym of Francis Marsden. The first issue came out in the summer of 1916, containing contributions from W.H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, Frank Brangwyn, J.C. Squire, Ricketts and Shannon.

Generally, Form was highly criticized by the critics and the public. George Bernard Shaw described it as a "very horrible publication", he proclaimed its design and layout to be "ancient Morrisian" and out of fashion. As a result, the second edition of the magazine appeared only in April 1917, and soon after, Frederick Carter resigned due to arguments with Austin Spare.

In 1917, Austin Spare was forced to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, initially being stationed at its depot in Blackpool. Towards the end of 1918, the artist was sent back to London, where he was based at the King George's Hospital Barracks in Stamford Street, Waterloo; he served as the acting staff-sergeant. Spare was given the task of illustrating the conflict along with other painters, they were based in a studio at 76 Fulham Road.

Spare was demobilized in 1919, settling in Bloomsbury, Central London. In 1921 he published The Focus of Life The Mutterings of AOS by Morland Press, it was edited and introduced by Frederick Carter. The success of this book pushed Spare to revive Form in a new format. The first issue was released in October 1921. Glyn Philpot, Edith Sitwell, Walter de la Mare, Sidney Sime, Robert Graves, Herbert Furst, J.F.C. Fuller and Havelock Ellis were among its contributors. Spare discontinued the magazine after the third issue. In 1922 Austin Spare began his work on another art journal, The Golden Hind. The first issue emerged in October 1922. Faced with problems, the journal eventually folded after eight issues.

The summer of 1924 saw Austin Spare create a sketchbook of "automatic drawings" entitled The Book of Ugly Ecstasy. The book consisted of a series of grotesque creatures and its sole copy was purchased by the art historian Gerald Reitlinger. In a year he produced a similar sketchbook, A Book of Automatic Drawings. In addition, Spare also began his work on a new book, a piece of automatic writing titled The Anathema of Zos: The Sermon to the Hypocrites, where he criticized British society influenced by the ideas of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Spare held exhibitions of his artworks at the St. George's Gallery in Hanover Square in 1927, and then at the Lefevre Gallery in 1929, but his work received little attention from the public. Austin Spare lived in poverty, his oeuvre became unpopular in the mainstream London art scene, so Spare started to think of committing suicide. However, he continued to create and exhibited new paintings. He was often visited at his flat by friends and people interested in purchasing his works, and developed friendships with Dennis Bardens, Oswell Blakeston and Frank Letchford.

In the summer of 1936, the artistic movement of Surrealism first appeared in London, and Austin Spare, known for his unusual artworks, was believed to be a British forerunner of the movement. His works received renewed interest, and in 1936, 1937 and 1938 he exhibited his paintings in Walworth Road. All three shows were a success, and he began teaching students at his studio in what he called his Austin Spare School of Draughtsmanship.

Spare later asserted that the German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler was highly interested in his oeuvre after one of his portraits was bought by the German embassy in London. According to Spare's story, (the accuracy of which has never been verified), in 1936 Hitler requested that the artist travel to Berlin to create his portrait, but Austin Spare refused, saying that "If you are a superman, let me be forever animal." In the late 1930s, Spare again told that story, but changed several details in it, affirming that he had actually travelled to Berlin and produced the portrait, but that he had returned to London with it, where he had actually made use of it in the creation of an anti-Nazi artwork.

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Spare tried to join the army but was deemed too old. In the subsequent Blitz of London, Austin Spare's flat and all the artworks in it were destroyed by a bomb on 10 May 1941, injuring his arms and making him homeless. At first, he took up residence at the working men's hostel in Walworth Road, then moved into a sculptor's studio in Spitalfields and finally settled in the Brixton basement of his friend Ada Pain at 5 Wynne Road. Despite the problems and growing poverty, he continued working, and thought of the creation of a new art journal with his friend, the poet Vera Wainwright, although this never happened.

When the war was over, Austin Spare organized a comeback show in November 1947 at the Archer Gallery. A commercial success, the artworks on display showed the increasing influence of Spiritualism on the artist's thought, and included a number of portraits of prominent Spiritualists, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Kate Fox-Jencken.

In the spring of 1949, he got acquainted with Kenneth Grant, a former disciple of Aleister Crowley's who was greatly interested in the occult. Under the Grants' influence, Spare began writing several new occult manuscripts, the Logomachy of Zos and the Zoetic Grimoire of Zos, which remained unpublished, and also producing connected with witchcraft and the witches' sabbath, including "Witchery", "Walpurgis Vampire" and "Satiated Succubi"

Austin Spare held his first pub show at the Temple Bar in Walworth Road in late 1949, which was a great success. Impressed by the exhibition, publisher Michael Hall commissioned Spare to help provide illustrations for his new periodical, The London Mystery Magazine. Many of these paintings were publicly presented in the summer of 1952 at the Mansion House Tavern in Kennington, and then at The White Bear pub in the autumn of 1953, but the latter became a commercial failure.

In 1954 Spare claimed that he was fed up of exhibiting in pubs, wishing to return to selling his artworks from actual galleries. That year he organised a home exhibition, followed by another one at the Archer Gallery in October 1955, displaying his works executed in pastels.

Achievements

• 

  Austin Spare was one of the greatest artists of all times, who became the inventor of many of the techniques that would later be dubbed chaos magic, also known as chaos magick. Spare's oeuvre is remarkable for its variety, including paintings, a vast number of drawings, works with pastel, a few etchings, published books combining text with illustrations, and even fancy bookplates. He was prolific from his earliest years until his death.
  
  In 1903 he won a silver medal at the National Competition of Schools of Art, where the judges, who included Walter Crane and Byam Shaw, praised his "remarkable sense of colour and great vigour of conception."
  
  Spare became an influential figure in esotericism. Some of his techniques, in particular, the use of sigils and the production of an "alphabet of desire" were adopted, adapted and popularized by Peter J. Carroll in the work Liber Null and Psychonaut.
  
  In addition, Austin Spare was a source of inspiration for many musicians. Bulldog Breed, a British psychedelic group, have a song titled "Austin Osmanspare" on their album Made In England (1969). John Balance of the influential industrial music band Coil described Spare as his "mentor," and stated that "what Spare did in art, we try to do through music." Moreover, the Polish death metal band Behemoth recorded a studio album entitled "Zos Kia Cultus" in 2002.
  
  A new street was named after the artist near his former home in Elephant and Castle in 2016. Spare Street, created from a series of refurbished railway arches, is part of Southwark's 'Low Line' project and is home to local arts organisation Hotel Elephant.
  
  Spare’s works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey, among others. London's The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History has a permanent gallery dedicated to his oeuvre; it is called The Spare Room.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Book of Pleasure: The Psychology of Ecstasy

    (The book covers both mystical and magical aspects of Spar...)

    1913
  • Earth Inferno

    (The book introduces the reader for the first time to Spar...)

    1905
  • The Focus of Life: The Mutterings of AOS

    (The book contains three "Aphorisms" along with various ac...)

    1921
  • Anathema of Zos 1927

• painting

  • Portrait of the Artist

  • A Nursing Orderly

  • Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps

  • Dame Rachel Crowdy RRC

  • Emma Maud McCarthy, GBE, RRC

  • Ascension of the Ego from Ecstasy to Ecstasy

  • Effloration

  • Dr. Flora Murray Working at Her Desk Observed by a Unnamed Man to Her Side

  • Dame Sidney Browne, RRC

  • An Improvised Dressing-station

  • Sitter Identified as Beatrice Alison Macfarlane (by Her Son Colin Laird from Ely, Visited 9.7.1998)

  • Wimereux Cemetery

  • Becket Williams

  • The boxer

  • Ann Driver

  • Visualization Steps Out

  • Crouching nude, seen from behind

  • Untitled, encounter

  • Gaia

  • Flower Girl

  • Portrait of a man

  • Standing female nude

  • H.V. Morton

  • Inferno

  • Transcriptions - 7 faces

  • Netheresque

  • Acrobat

  • Portrait of William Valentine Parkins

Religion

Spare was brought up within the Anglican denomination of Christianity. However, as a teenager, he rejected this monotheistic faith that "I am devising a religion of my own which embodies my conception of what we are, we were, and shall be in the future." He read several books on Theosophy written by Madame Blavatsky, and decided to explore the topic further, also reading the works of prominent occultists Cornelius Agrippa and Eliphas Levi. As a result, he became a practicing occultist.

Spare became interested in western esotericism and developed his own magico-religious philosophy which has come to be known as the Zos Kia Cultus (also Zos-Kia Cultus).

Austin Spare's magico-religious views were based on the dual concepts of Zos and Kia. Austin Spare described "Zos" as the human body and mind, and would later adopt the term as a pseudonym for himself. He used the term "Kia" to refer to a universal mind or ultimate power, similar to the Hindu idea of Brahman or the Taoist idea of the Tao.

Politics

Austin Osman Spare was an ardent anti-Nazi.

Views

Austin Spare placed great emphasis on the unconscious part of the mind, claiming that it was the source of inspiration. At the same time, he believed the conscious part of the mind was useless for creativity, and it only served to reinforce the separation between ourselves and what we desire.

It has been argued that Spare's magic depended (at least in part) upon psychological repression, as he believed that intentionally repressed material would become immensely effective in the same way that "unwanted" (since not consciously provoked) repressions and complexes have tremendous power over the person and his or her shaping of reality. Spare viewed the subconscious mind as the source of all magical power. According to Austin Spare, a magical desire cannot become truly effective until it has become an organic part of the subconscious mind.

In spite of his interest in the unconscious, Austin Spare criticized the ideas proposed by the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, referring to them as "Fraud and Junk."

Austin Spare also believed in what he called "atavistic resurgence". Spare supposed that the human mind has atavistic memories that have their origins in earlier species on the evolutionary ladder. In Spare's world outlook, the "soul" was actually the continuing influence of "the ancestral animals" that humans had developed from, that could be tapped into to gain an idea of and qualities from past incarnations. That theory offered a unison of reincarnation and evolution, both being factors which Spare saw interwoven as both of them furthered evolutionary progression. Thus, Spare believed in the intimate unity between humans and other species of the animal world.

In his later years, Spare became obsessed with sex magic and plunged himself into the worship of Isis and other Egyptian gods. His obsession with sex magic turned him to many perverted sexual activities that the society of his time could not understand. He strongly believed that sexually repulsive acts caused certain chemical changes within the body, thereby transforming the magical consciousness.

Quotations: "Art is the instinctive application of the knowledge latent in the subconscious."

"A bat first grew wings and of the proper kind, by its desire being organic enough to reach the sub-consciousness. If its desire to fly had been conscious, it would have had to wait till it could have done so by the same means as ourselves, i.e. by machinery."

"The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am."

"And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things."

"Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity."

"Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. ‘Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist."

"In our solitariness... great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company."

"I am God, and all other gods are my imagery. I gave birth to myself. I am millions of forms excreating; eternal; and nothing exists except through me; yet I am not them they serve me."

"The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge."

Membership

Austin Spare was invited to join Aleister Crowley's Thelemite magical order, the A∴A∴ or Argenteum Astrum. Becoming the seventh member of the order in July 1907, he took the magical name of Yihovaeum. He remained in A∴A∴ until 1912, however, never became its full member, disliking Crowley's emphasis on strict hierarchy and organisation and becoming heavily critical of the practice of ceremonial magic. Spare disliked Crowley, with some rumours arising within the British esoteric community that Aleister Crowley had actually made sexual advances toward the young artist, something Spare had found loathsome, although these have never been proven. Crowley, in his turn, claimed that Austin Spare was only interested in "black magic" and for that reason had prevented him from fully entering the Order.

It was also believed that Spare was a member of the secretive Cult of Ku, a Chinese occult sect who gathered in Stockwell to worship a serpent goddess. At the same time, he was a member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).

• 

  A∴A∴ , United Kingdom

  1907 - 1912

Personality

Austin Spare was often described by friends as "down-to-earth" and an extremely kind-hearted person. Throughout his life, Spare was an animal lover, who tried to take care of any animals that he found near his home.

Physical Characteristics: In failing health, in May 1956 he was submitted to the South Western Hospital in Stockwell with a burst appendix; the doctor noted that he had also been suffering from anaemia, bronchitis, high blood pressure and gall stones.

Quotes from others about the person

• George Bernard Shaw: "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man."

Interests

• animals, radio, witchcraft

• Artists

  Charles Ricketts, E. J. Sullivan, George Frederic Watts, Aubrey Beardsley, El Greco

Connections

The actual nature of Austin Spare's sexuality at the time remains debated. His friend Frank Brangwyn later claimed Spare was "strongly" homosexual but had suppressed these leanings. However, in his later life, Spare referred to a wide variety of heterosexual encounters that took place at this time, including with a hermaphrodite, a dwarf with a protuberant forehead and a Welsh maid. Austin Spare would also attempt to pay court to both Sybil Waller, the daughter of Pickford Waller, as well as a younger girl named Constance "Connie" Smith.

One day, in a pub in Mayfair, Spare met a middle-aged woman named Mrs Shaw; she was eager to marry off her daughter, Eily Gertrude Shaw, who already had one child from an earlier relationship. Soon, Mrs Shaw introduced them to each other. Spare fell in love with her, creating a number of portraits of Eily.

Austin Spare and Eily Gertrude Shaw married on September 4, 1911. There are differing opinions regarding the place of the wedding, with Spare claiming that it took place in St George's, Hanover Square, although later biographer Phil Baker suggested that it might instead have been at St George's Register Office. At the wedding, Spare choked on his wedding cake, something his bride found hilarious.

However, a few years later, the relationship between Spare and his wife became strained. Austin Spare's wife was "unintellectual and materialistic", and distasted many of his friends, especially the younger males, asking Spare to cease his association with them.

Starting from 1919, Spare lived alone. Although the two never gained a divorce, Austin Spare separated from his wife Eily, who had begun a relationship with another man.

Father:

Philip Newton Spare

Mother:

Eliza Osman

Brother:

John Newton Spare

Brother:

William Herbert Spare

Sister:

Susan Ann Spare

Sister:

Ellen V. Spare

Wife:

Eily Gertrude Shaw

References

• Borough Satyr: The Life And Art of Austin Osman Spare Aside from glorious reproductions of art works by Spare, the book includes a biographical introduction by Robert Ansell, and essays and reminiscences of Spare by Clifford Bax, Ithell Colquhoun, Kenneth and Steffi Grant, Hadyn Mackay, John Smith Hannen Swaffer, and others.
  2005
• Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist An elegant and comprehensive biography of the controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, Austin Osman Spare.
  2011
• Lost Envoy: The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare Lost Envoy reproduces Austin Spare's tarot deck in its entirety for the first time, alongside new written and visual contributions from Jonathan Allen, Phil Baker, Helen Farley, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, Sally O'Reilly, and Gavin Semple.
  2016
• Austin Osman Spare: The Occult Life of London's Legendary Artist Austin Osman Spare is the definitive biography of the controversial occultist and artist, an enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world whose work was both hailed as genius and decried as immoral decadence.
  2014