{"id":16509,"date":"2015-03-11T04:23:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T03:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=16509"},"modified":"2015-05-16T15:51:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T14:51:19","slug":"spare-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/03\/11\/spare-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Spare things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spare-cthulhu.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cthulhu Cultus: The Sun is Sick (no date) by Austin Osman Spare.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been telling people about this drawing for years but I’ve not posted it here before. Spare produced this piece after Kenneth Grant gave him some of HP Lovecraft’s stories to read. I’ve never seen it dated but it’s probably from the mid-50s when Kenneth and Steffi Grant were corresponding with Spare and commissioning new artworks. What’s notable for me is that this is probably the first Lovecraft-derived drawing that wasn’t either a magazine or book illustration, or something done for one of the horror fanzines.<\/p>\n

\"coc.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Call of Cthulhu (1987) by John Coulthart.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lovecraft aficionados have never seemed aware of Spare’s drawing since Lovecraft studies tended until very recently to remain fixed on popular media and the often parochial world of genre fandom. When I came to draw the swamp scene for The Call of Cthulhu<\/em><\/a> in 1987 I borrowed the faces from Spare’s pillar for the column in the centre of the picture.<\/p>\n

\"bulldogbreed.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Bulldog Breed.<\/em><\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject, and in the spirit of showing how all the obsessions here connect in one way or another, Phil Baker’s excellent biography of Austin Spare<\/a> notes a surprising reference to the artist that predates Man, Myth and Magic<\/em> via the psychedelic music scene. Bulldog Breed were a short-lived London group, one of many being promoted by the Deram label in the late 1960s. The group’s one-and-only album, Made In England<\/em>, was released in 1969. The cover art is dreadful<\/a> but the final song is a number entitled Austin Osmanspare<\/em><\/a> [sic], a paean to the artist that turns AOS into a typical character from British psychedelia: an eccentric, oddly named, Victorian type with a sinister and mysterious glamour. According to Baker one of the band members had an aunt who knew Spare. It’s not a bad song, and the choice of magus gave them an edge over the Beatles who went for the more obvious Aleister Crowley<\/a>. “They said he was before his time…”<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Dreaming Out of Space: Kenneth Grant on HP Lovecraft<\/a>
\n\u2022 MMM in IT<\/a>
\n\u2022 Intertextuality<\/a>
\n\u2022 Abrahadabra<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Occult Explosion<\/a>
\n\u2022 Murmur Become Ceaseless and Myriad<\/a>
\n\u2022 Kenneth Grant, 1924\u20132011<\/a>
\n\u2022 New Austin Spare grimoires<\/a>
\n\u2022 Austin Spare absinthe<\/a>
\n\u2022 Austin Spare\u2019s Behind the Veil<\/a>
\n\u2022 Austin Osman Spare<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cthulhu Cultus: The Sun is Sick (no date) by Austin Osman Spare. I’ve been telling people about this drawing for years but I’ve not posted it here before. Spare produced this piece after Kenneth Grant gave him some of HP Lovecraft’s stories to read. I’ve never seen it dated but it’s probably from the mid-50s … Continue reading “Spare things”<\/span><\/a><\/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":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,9,22,26,3,16,17,23],"tags":[391,2469,316,7086,104,1687,2214,7316,2470,2215,178],"class_list":["post-16509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-comics","category-horror","category-lovecraft","category-music","category-occult","category-psychedelia","category-work","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-austin-osman-spare","tag-austin-spare","tag-bulldog-breed","tag-cthulhu","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-kenneth-grant","tag-man-myth-magic","tag-phil-baker","tag-steffi-grant","tag-the-beatles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4ih","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}