![]() But the results were disputed, causing a major rift in the Society. Two of the other judges were high-profile members of the American Society for Psychical Research. She was pitted against Harry Houdini, the virtuoso stunt man who had recently wowed audiences by making a full-grown elephant vanish from the stage of the New York Hippodrome. Almost a whole room is dedicated to the famous attempt to expose Mina “Margery” Crandon, a medium who gained mass popularity after the Second World War. Smoke and Mirrors explores this topsy-turvy battle of wits. In order to test the mediums, the SPR enlisted the help of stage magicians, illusionists and conjurers. The stated purpose of the SPR – an institution that still exists today, although much transformed – was to test paranormal claims, under strict scientific conditions. In 1882, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was born, headed by the utilitarian philosopher and economist Henry Sidgwick. ![]() The craze provoked a scientific backlash. #THE ART OF ILLUSION SERIES#A foot-long trumpet, designed to amplify the dead, stands opposite a series of spirit photographs, in which life-like plasmic blobs appear to leer over petticoated ladies. Glass cabinets gleam with the paraphernalia of the parlour séance. We are plunged into the hazy world of late Victorian spiritualism. #THE ART OF ILLUSION PROFESSIONAL#Smoke and Mirrors begins in the Belle Epoque of western Europe in the late 19th century, showing us how the development of psychology involved professional magicians. It shows us how, in the information age, we have much to learn from the “magical arts”, as our ancestors have done throughout the ages. Once again, the Wellcome has succeeded in fulfilling its mission to provoke us into thinking more deeply about the connections between science, life and art. The exhibition Smoke and Mirrors, now showing at the Wellcome Collection in London, turns these assumptions on their head. The profession is notoriously male, conjuring the image of a suited Ken doll: part cultist, part used-car-salesman. Magicians seem like an odd breed these days. In our post-truth era, bending a spoon on camera, or even claiming to have burst the water pipes in Parliament, as Geller also did, feels simultaneously dreary and deranged. ![]() The general reaction was lukewarm amusement. I’d forgotten the existence of spoon-bender extraordinaire Uri Geller before he pledged to stop Brexit with his telepathic powers in March. ![]() This article is a preview from the Summer 2019 edition of New Humanist “Smoke and Mirrors: The psychology of magic” at the Wellcome Collection in London ![]()
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