"Magic Show" demonstrates how visual artists and magicians both operate in realms where logic becomes unstable, and superstition, fantasy and mysticism encroach. It shows how artists adopt magicians' perception-shifting ploys and manipulate or redirect credulity in their explorations of the creative agency of illusion, the power of suggestion and the fragility of belief. This fully illustrated book contains essays by co-curators Jonathan Allen and Sally O'Reilly and illustrated texts on each of the 24 artists. It also features newly commissioned essays by Simon During, Brigitte Felderer, Peter Lamont, Pierre Taillefer, Helen Varola and Marina Warner; a compendium of existing texts on the theme of magic from Theodor Adorno to H.G. Wells; and, a selection of magical ephemera.

Author Biography

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.