Austin Osman Spare’s favorite subject was a naked body. Not just naked, but sexually aroused: men without pants cracking whips in the sky, women squeezing disembodied penises between their breasts. Spare was born in England in 1886. He went to art school, rejected Christianity, studied Theosophy. Fantasy, ecstasy, and pleasure were the true subjects of Spare’s X-rated drawings, which were commercially successful before the First World War; by 1924 Europeans had lost interest in his work. In 1956, the year Spare died, risqué imagery was back in style. At Iceberg Projects, the artist’s first solo show in North America presents a rare folio of his drawings. When they were first created, several of these works were illegal to own or display. —Jensen Davis