Magic Show - Softcover

Jonathan Allen; Sally O'Reilly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853322814 ISBN 13: 9781853322815

Publisher: Hayward Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

Magic Show demonstrates how visual artists adopt the perception-shifting tactics of the theatrical magician to explore questions of creative agency, the power of suggestion, and the fragility of belief. Artists, like magicians, manipulate and mystify not simply for entertainment, but to redress fundamental relationships within the social, political or cultural realm.
This richly illustrated book, with over 100 colour reproductions, contains essays that elaborate on the intersections between art and magic by Jonathan Allen and Sally O'Reilly, as well as texts on each of the 24 featured artists. It also contains new writing on arcane images and esoteric ideas from the cultural history of magic by Simon During, Brigitte Felderer, Peter Lamont, Pierre Taillefer, Helen Varola and Marina Warner; a fold-out collation of texts and images exploring the dynamics of magic, art and power; and an illustrated selection of curious props and off-beat ephemera from the world of theatrical magic.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Allen is a London-based artist. In 2007 he guest edited an issue of the New York-based art and culture quarterly Cabinet on the theme of magic, and was recently awarded the Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Fellowship 2007-8 at the University of Oxford and the British School at Rome. Sally O'Reilly is a writer, contributing regularly to many art publications, including Art Monthly, Frieze, Art Review, Spike and Time Out. She is co-editor of Implicasphere and a Dean of Brown Mountain College of the Performing Arts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hayward Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1853322814
• ISBN 13: 9781853322815
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 115