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16th January 2024
The Art of Trickery
(Magicians in the art & some tricks)
Presented by Ian Keable
Ian Keable gained a First Class degree from Oxford University, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then became a professional magician. He is a Member of The Inner Magic Circle. In 2014 he published Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters & Literature. He now divides his time between performing magic, giving talks and researching and writing. His latest book, The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth-Century England, was published in 2021.
Ian’s presentation will include some actual magic and show how magicians have appeared in art throughout the centuries, whether in paintings, satirical prints or cartoons. Early artists used the magician to symbolise the mysterious and the unknown, associating them with astrology and tarot cards.
In the sixteenth century, Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch produced two of the most famous and striking pictures of the conjurer performing the Cups and Balls trick. The 18th and 19th century saw a proliferation in engravings and lithographs showing the magician both indoors and on the streets. Cartoonists and satirists delighted in linking politicians with skulduggery, with images of them featuring the Three-Card Trick, Vanishing illusions or pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat.
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