Austin Spare, Surrealism and the Occult Underground of 1990s London

Nadia Choucha, author of Surrealism & The Occult (1991, 2016) traces the evolution of Surrealist ideas and situates them within the occult currents of fin-de-siècle European culture, revealing how these currents infused the work of various thinkers and artists in their quest for the ‘marvellous’.

As well as focusing on some of the central concepts from the book, she discusses the influences, context and impact of her research as well as her links to the occult underground of the early 1990s, covering topics such as her correspondence with Kenneth Grant, the personal secretary of Aleister Crowley, and friendship with Gavin Semple, an authority on the work of Austin Osman Spare, thus providing a fuller picture of the evolution of the work as it approaches the 25th anniversary of its initial publication.