The Catalpa Monographs
A Critical Survey of the Art and Writings of Austin Osman Spare
by Dr William Wallace
In this rich and thought-provoking book, the most prolific contributor to Sparean scholarship returns to his earliest writings as the basis for a newly emended inquiry into the volatile essences of Austin Osman Spare’s art.
Comprising a revised and much expanded republication of the long out-of-print books The Early Works of Austin Osman Spare and The Late Works of Austin Osman Spare, this edition also includes 93 colour images and 50 unpublished artworks by Spare, including 20 very early ink drawings and a self-portrait in oils from a recently discovered private collection. An extensive new introduction analyses the themes and obsessions in Spare’s art; palimpsests and Realism.
Decades of fastidious research have yielded many insights and revelations which are now elucidated with many references to surprising source imagery. By immersing himself in Spare’s creative impetus, William Wallace has explored not only occult texts and alchemical art, but has also found a rich vein of reference and allusion to the biblical texts, and the art of Williams Blake, Hogarth and Shakespeare.
Crucially, the reader is now furnished with the solutions to several iconographical enigmas; there is an in-depth examination the Mrs Paterson myth, ‘Black Eagle’, and the first convincing decoding of the ‘L.C.O’C.S’ dedication found in The Focus of Life.
Dr Wallace also comments on an unpublished early political cartoon of Chamberlain, as well as reproducing correspondence between Kenneth Grant, and an affectionate memoir of Frank Letchford.
The Foreword is provided by Michael Staley; the Afterword by Stephen Pochin, who examines Spare’s life-long appropriation of artistic motifs, from Egyptian to G.F. Watts, to Rodin and George Tinworth.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
by Stephen Pochin
Foreword
by Michael Staley
0 | THE CATALPA MONOGRAPHS REVIS’D
I Spare the Realist
Plates 1–23
II Encoded Dedications
III The Elusive Mrs Paterson
IV Spirit Guides and Intrusive Familiars
V Vortex and Focus Revisited
VI Cow-dust — The Focus of Life
VII Palimpsest
Notes
Chronology
Plates 24—46
1 | THE EARLY WORK OF AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE 1900–1919
Foreword
I Milieu
II Elders and Contemporaries
III Salomé Unveiled
IV Mask
Notes
Bibliography
Plates 47—69
2 | THE LATER WORK OF AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE 1917–1956
Foreword
I The Great War
II Vortex and Focus
III Melancolia
IV Life
Notes
Exhibitions
Bibliography
Picture Commentaries
Afterword: In Pursuit of the Alchemy of Appearances
Notes
Appendix: About Him and About — Frank Letchford
Appendix: Correspondences — Kenneth Grant
Index
Colophon
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Extensively illustrated with a two litho printed colour-plate sections, and over 100 black & white images throughout the text.
Hardcover Edition - Limited to 800 numbered copies
250 pages. Amaranth purple cloth-bound hardcover with illustrated dust-jacket, silver foil blocking to spine. Sewn, custom illustrated endpapers, purple & white head and tail bands.
ISBN: 978-0-9567004-4-5
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About the Artist
The late Austin Osman Spare (1886 – 1956) is one of the most influential and innovative figures in twentieth century occultism. A natural artist and psychic, Spare’s explorations of the creative focus gave rise to an ontology and body of work that departs radically from conventional occultism, both then and now. Influenced by symbolism and Art Nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilisation based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self.
From his early years, Spare developed his own magico-religious philosophy which has come to be known as the Zos Kia Cultus, a term coined by his friend and fellow occultist Kenneth Grant. Raised in the Anglican denomination of Christianity, Spare had come to denounce this monotheistic faith when he was seventeen, telling a reporter 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”.
