Simple axis tick label and tick directions

First subplot moves the tick labels to inside the spines. Second subplot moves the ticks to inside the spines. These effects can be obtained for a standard Axes by tick_params.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import mpl_toolkits.axisartist as axisartist


def setup_axes(fig, pos):
    ax = fig.add_subplot(pos, axes_class=axisartist.Axes)
    ax.set_yticks([0.2, 0.8])
    ax.set_xticks([0.2, 0.8])
    return ax


fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5, 2))
fig.subplots_adjust(wspace=0.4, bottom=0.3)

ax1 = setup_axes(fig, 121)
ax1.set_xlabel("ax1 X-label")
ax1.set_ylabel("ax1 Y-label")

ax1.axis[:].invert_ticklabel_direction()

ax2 = setup_axes(fig, 122)
ax2.set_xlabel("ax2 X-label")
ax2.set_ylabel("ax2 Y-label")

ax2.axis[:].major_ticks.set_tick_out(False)

plt.show()