The discussion – some may say argument – of whether magic is art is evergreen. It pops up in the online forums as regular as dandelions in the spring. I don’t believe it will ever be settled to the satisfaction of either side of the fence.
If you can find it, magician and filmmaker, R. Paul Wilson, made a short film about this subject using unused segments from his wonderful documentary, Our Magic. The performers interviewed share their opinions on whether it is or it isn’t. I’m afraid that is where we’ll always be. Two camps on either side of the border with a few in the no man’s land in the middle. Like you, everyone in Wilson’s short, and many who’ve posted on the forums, I have my opinion.
Art is a highly subjective as what speaks to one person may or may not to another. A creator – we’ll set the term artist aside – brings forth a piece that has been building inside of them. It’s a personal expression of what they have been thinking and feeling. This expression may or may not touch the viewer. It may, it may not, or it may some time in the future. The creator may not care as it’s about the expression. Unless it’s a strictly commercial enterprise and in which case, it’s probably not art.
Magic, as far as I can tell, has not consistently been a form of personal expression. There’s been notable exceptions of course. Performance pieces by Penn and Teller, Robert E. Neale, and Eugene Burger come to mind. For the most part, we are more focused on fooling – not expression of our worldview.
For my magic to be a form of self expression, I need to move away from explanatory, published, or cliched patter. I first need to decide what my opinions of the world are and what I want to say. This is the catch, isn’t it?
For my magic to be true self expression, I need to be honest with myself and my participants and, perhaps, a little vulnerable. Vulnerability isn’t what comes to mind when we think of a magician. We think of a magician as a person of great power. Can a person of power be vulnerable?
Magic can be done artfully like painting, dance, singing or other forms of art. But just like the other forms, it’s fundamentally a craft – a set of skills that can be learned. It’s in our doing that it becomes art. In that doing, we must transcend our need to fool. Fooling is just the start as there are deeper veins to mine.
As the late Dr. Rodney E. Donaldson said to his students many years ago, it’s the “manner with which” we do what we do.
