A Book of Satyrs

About this book

The figures in Austin Osman Spare's drawings look as though someone has caught them halfway between a human gesture and an uncomfortable dream. Faces distort, limbs coil, and the joke can turn cruel before the viewer has quite understood it.

Published early in Spare's career, this sequence of satirical drawings shows his extraordinary control of line and his appetite for grotesque invention. An introduction by James Guthrie accompanies the work. Long before Spare became closely associated with occult art, he was already making bodies express things that polite portraiture preferred to conceal.