Boy genius, borough satyr
When I was in my twenties, a friend introduced me to the writing of Austin Osman Spare, but as solo ceremonial magician rather than as a painter.
The friend was a bit older than I, and he lived modestly in a house he had inherited, had some sort of trust fund, and worked occasionally in the antiques field. Spare’s work must have resonated more with him than with me, although he didn’t live as “a swine among swine.”
The Daily Telegraph (UK) covers the opening of an exhibition of Spare’s paintings in London. (Registration required.) The article mentions Spare’s initial high standing in the art world but also his interest in magic:
He was an outsider from the start. His mother recalled that he didn’t play with other boys, preferring the company of a sorceress called Mrs Patterson, whom he described as his “witch mother”. In 1904, aged 17, he was hailed by the press as a “boy genius” when his work was shown at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Lionised by some of the foremost artists of his time–George Frederic Watts, Augustus John and John Singer Sargent–he received a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where one contemporary described him as “a god-like figure of whom other students stood in awe, a fair creature like a Greek god, curly-headed, proud, self-willed, practising the black arts, taking drugs, disdainfully apart from the crowd”.
The exhibit is tied to a new biography, Borough Satyr, from Fulgur Ltd..
Coincidentally, The Pomegranate will published a paper on Spare in our May 2006 issue if all goes well.
Tag: Austin Osman Spare