The Living Word of Zos

by Robert Ansell

A Personal Recollection first published in AOS: A Celebration, 14th May, 2006

In life we sometimes encounter an individual who has a profound influence on the way we see the world, and more rarely, on the way the world sees us. Many years ago, I met such a man. Our first contact, through the pages of a book, made only a slight impression on me, but I was young and the distractions of that volume many. Six years later my love of books brought me to into the service of the auctioneers Sotheby’s and here, one morning in 1986, the artist and publisher Austin Osman Spare and I were formally introduced.

My professional mentor was Simon Heneage, a man of exceptional kindness and generosity. Simon was astute in recognising a rebel without a cause and, no doubt for this reason, he asked me to comment upon a small pen and ink drawing. It was a design for an Edwardian ex-libris, but somehow the artist had brought life into an impossible pairing; the head of a mallard bursting out from a strange floral composition. It was at once exquisite, unsettling and masterful. I studied it intently as Simon introduced me to the story of the artist – a boy genius, gifted, flawed, later a London recluse and mystery. It seemed an extraordinary life, mythic and full of pathos, but as I gazed into the intricate lines of the drawing I was overwhelmed by a sense of absolute familiarity. A few days later, and years before I understood what such an undertaking involved, I announced to bemused colleagues that I was going to write a biography for the artist. In retrospect it was more of a commitment to the man than to his life, but my rôle had yet to be made clear for me, and the enthusiasm of youth is seldom concerned with detail.

During the early winter of 1986, my cursory research into the life of Austin Osman Spare revealed an artist dismissed by his contemporary critics. Common themes seemed to involve him “dabbling in the occult” and “turning his back on society.” These clichés seemed glib even to my inexperienced eye, yet if these obstacles stood in the way of a more intimate understanding, events were to change my perspective within weeks. In the November of 1986 I was asked at short notice to attend a house visit for an important client. It was my first such visit for Sotheby’s and I felt ill-prepared, but despite reservations I found myself dispatched to deepest Dorset in search of a house referred to simply as ‘The Eye.’ After stopping for directions in Corfe Castle, I arrived at the gate to a discrete drive flanked by a high hedge – there was no name – but on the gatepost my gaze was met by a cyclopic eye motif that glared hypnotically out at the world.

The house was the home of the reclusive composer Kaikhosru Sorabji, then ninety-four years old. After my long journey Sorabji’s assistant, Alastair Hinton, welcomed me into a large drawing room full of strange and exotic antiques. The scene seemed to have lain unchanged for decades and to my naïveté it held an unfamiliar glamour. Uncertain and nervous, I raised my eyes and found, to my astonishment, a large pen and wash drawing by a very familiar artist. I recall identifying the picture and Alastair guiding me towards a signed vellum copy of The Book of Pleasure and a deluxe copy of The Focus of Life, before leaving me to continue with my professional assessment. Standing alone in that silent and dusky room, with a shaft of sunlight streaming onto Sorabji’s parlour grand and his shelves lined with exquisitely bound rarities, I looked up at the drawing and breathed the air of an era still vital, yet long passed. In these few moments AOS seemed to transcend glib cliché and become a living truth. Seldom does life offer such profound clarity.

In early 1987, armed and encouraged by Simon, and seemingly beckoned by my subject, I ventured tentatively out onto the path I now know so intimately. In search of my quarry I made enquiries to various booksellers and thankfully these produced a copy of Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival. Here I found an entirely different man from the failed artist of the fine arts academia, AOS had become ZOS: mythic, potent and sexed. It was to become the entrée to another Spare, warm and humorous, later enfleshed by the intimate record of Zos Speaks!, but at that time a man glimpsed through a glass darkly. Whilst I grappled with reconciling this 50s Brixton sorcerer to the Edwardian maverick artist, fate once again intervened to provide a crucial segment of the puzzle. A casual remark led one of my colleagues at Sotheby’s, Dendy Easton, to mention he had recently met an elderly man who claimed to have known Spare well. I was intrigued and in the January of 1987 found myself writing to an unexpecting Frank Letchford.

If Sorabji had represented Spare’s elitist Edwardian heights, Frank represented the Elephant and Castle humanitarian. Warm, engaging and ever helpful, Frank opened many doors for me, brokering introductions to Dennis Bardens, Ian Kenyur-Hodgkins and eventually, to my great friend and co-conspirator, Gavin Semple. Working together Gavin and I found camaraderie and ultimately inspiration; for it was during this time our research unearthed an early notepaper design by Spare as a ‘Publisher of Rare Editions.’ In this moment was revealed the fulgurant path that now lies for so many years behind us, born of a seemingly unfulfilled dream.

These events are now memories, yet still the hand of Spare draws a line across the pages of my life – sometimes almost unperceivable, at others unmistakable, dancing, twisting, but always living, an influence that outlasts all others. His early experiments with automatism and the philosophy of the “Neither-Neither” were pioneering excursions into the nature of creative vision and these have been a source of inspiration to me, as they have to many others. That my early understandings of the man have now given way to a wiser insight has perhaps more to do with the lessons of my own life than of knowledge gained from books and meeting those who knew him well. For, when you strip away the myths and fallacies surrounding Spare’s long creative path, what remains is the story of an incredibly driven man who, despite the endless hardships dealt to him by fate, refused to give up or compromise. Fifty years after his death it is this resolve, the Stoicism of Zos, that seems a much more authentic legacy than the cults of acquisitive formulae descended from popular myth. To suffer greatly and find therein a deeper understanding of the human condition is perhaps the most humbling of all ennoblements: Spare lived and limned that life, lest we forget. Austin Osman Spare, philosopher, mystic, artist and Stoic – your legacy lives on still.

Copyright © Robert Ansell, 2006
Reproduced with permission

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