{"id":546,"date":"2005-10-29T17:42:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-29T17:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2005-10-29T17:42:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-29T17:42:00","slug":"546","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Boy genius, borough satyr<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was in my twenties, a friend introduced me to the writing of Austin Osman Spare<\/a>, but as solo ceremonial magician rather than as a painter.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

The Daily Telegraph<\/em> (UK) covers the opening of an exhibition of Spare’s paintings in London<\/a>. (Registration required.) The article mentions Spare’s initial high standing in the art world but also his interest in magic:<\/p>\n

RIGHT: Spare’s Portrait of a Woman<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

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<\/a>, Augustus John<\/a> and John Singer Sargent<\/a>–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”.<\/em><\/p>\n

The exhibit is tied to a new biography, Borough Satyr<\/em>, from Fulgur Ltd.<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, The Pomegranate<\/em><\/a> will published a paper on Spare in our May 2006 issue if all goes well.<\/p>\n

Tag: Austin Osman Spare<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-546","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1282,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1282","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":0},"title":"It’s Cool to be Medieval","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"At least according to critic Philip Hensher, writing in a British newspaper, who says that medieval is the new black:It\u2019s never easy to account for fashion, but perhaps some real factors have contributed to the reading matter of 2010. This last year has seen a world-wide fear of a destructive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11020,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11020","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":1},"title":"Playing Heathen Neo-folk on North Dakota Highways","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I was on my way to a little town in North Dakota where a friend lives about at the intersection of Norway and Washington streets \u2014 can you get any more perfect than that? And every little town is dominated by a Lutheran steeple. A friend in Poland and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"music\"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/finley-lutheran-church.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7925,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7925","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":2},"title":"Passing of Nikki Bado","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was just informed today of the passing of an old friend and colleague in Pagan studies, Nikki Bado, who taught at Iowa State University. She had been on medical leave for the last year or so, and apparently suffered a heart attack after her last surgery. I have forgotten\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"nikki","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/nikki.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13128,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13128","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":3},"title":"Who Does Neo-Folk like Siberians?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The Siberian band Otken \u2014 check out their YouTube channel. (Thanks for a friend here in the Hardscrabble country.)","rel":"","context":"In \"music\"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6561,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6561","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":4},"title":"The “Horse Boy” and the Shamans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"If you saw the 2009\u00a0 documentary The Horse Boy, about Rowan, the autistic boy who is helped somewhat by horseback riding and by Mongolian shamans, there is more to the story. (There is also a book, The Horse Boy: A Memoir of Healing, published in 2010.) Before it was released\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5649,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5649","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":5},"title":"Science Fiction and the Grieving Process","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At io9, Lauren Davis writes about how science fiction helped her to deal with her grief at the sudden death of her younger brother. The podcasts were meant to be a distraction, like the wine or the VCDs of movies my mom had brought home from a trip to Asia\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"literature\"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}