Sunday, January 23, 2011

Austin Osman Spare

On 14th November 2010 I managed to get to the last day of the “Austin Osman Spare: Fallen Visonary” exhibition featuring the art of Austin Osman Spare at The Cuming Museum.
Jerusalem Press has published a lavish book to accompany this exhibition called Austin Osman Spare: Cockney Visionary Conceived, Compiled and Edited by Stephen Pochin.
The book also includes a documentary which lasts about 30 minutes called The Bones Go Last.

The books contents include:
An introduction: Robert Ansell
A cartographic study: Gavin W Semple
Biographical essay: Geraldine Beskin (of Atlantis bookshop)
Magical essay: Michael Staley (who organised a great AOS night in London commemorating 50 years since his death in 2006)
Essays by the curators: Christopher Jordan and Stephen Pochin
Commentaries on the works featured: Dr. William Wallace

They are also set to publish a new version of Spare’s Book of Pleasure which will have an introduction by Alan Moore.

EARTH INFERNO 1905


NUDE HOLDING A CRYSTAL BALL 1914-20


THEURGY 1928


DREAM CONTENT HOPES, FEARS AND HALF-COGNIZANT 1954


Short video clip from an episode of The Culture Show (BBC UK 2010):

1 comment:

Bogus Magus said...

Thanks for the heads up, fuzzbuddy - I have always known the name, but know little of his art (I might have mumbled 'sigils' or 'magick' but probably couldn't add much to that.)

I don't know if I'll make it to the exhibition, but this glimpse intrigued me a lot - and a great clip of Alan Moore comes as a bonus.

Webring

Member of the NEW TRAJECTORIES webring