The Static Alignments

Austin Osman Spare’s School of Draughtsmanship

Frank Letchford, William Wallace, Michael Staley & Stephen Pochin

Jerusalem Press 2020

Hb, 310pp, £30, ISBN 9780956700452

Austin Osman Spare – even just uttering his name is like an incantation. Spare is an artist of today; his close friendship with Sylvia Pankhurst and affinity with gender fluency show that his work is eternal and timeless, not limited by any man-made movement or category.

This magnificent book is the first to delve deeply into the actual working world of Spare-theartist. Rather than the popular vision of Spare in a damp and dingy basement surrounded by cats with sigils pouring down the chimney and out through his hands onto the paper, we have a sophisticated and nuanced artist at work using modern technology such as slide projectors; a large section of the book is devoted to his work with photography.

Spare was seriously committed to educating practitioners in the techniques involved with his forms of draughtsmanship. The exactitude of his notes regarding materials and the wonderful directions of how to guide one’s thoughts and ideas make for fascinating and hypnotic reading. One student was shocked by Spare’s wild, unkempt appearance, describing him as “unwashed”, though he found the teaching quarters “reasonably tidy”.

Igor Stravinsky once said that the only freedom is through discipline. The message of this book is that even the most apparently otherworldly artist of the occult has to be grounded with a classic training so that their draughtsmanship is second to none. It is refreshing to see the real power of art’s potentiality to unlock portals into the other worlds, portals which are not opened by ego and the desperation for fame but instead by skill, discipline and constant training – and Spare is a supreme example.

This is easily the best book on how to truly achieve the occult transcendental in art that I have ever read.

Ian Charles Scott ★★★★★