Harry Houdini: the art of charm

It’s February. The celebrations for the end of 2011 and the arrival of the year of the Dragon are over, and we can finally say that we are cruising this new year on full speed. Some of you might still have the Christmas tree in the living room: fallen into misery like a silent-movie star, even your cat is ignoring it. Some of you might still have champagne corks around the house under the furniture, or some Italian panettone packages opened, recycled as a breakfast treat or a high-calorie experiment with Nutella spread. In short, all of you have, more or less, honoured this crucial beginning with a particular ceremony: I, for example, went to see the Houdini: Art and Magic exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the first Tuesday of January. Designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, this museum is built in place of a power substation that sits with the back towards the noisy and super central Market Street, and addresses the facing Yerba Buena Gardens in a whispered voice, like two friends during an hatha yoga practice. No other exhibition could have been a better fit for the celebration of a new year. Not only Harry Houdini was a great magician and a wonderful artist, but he was and still is the most charming personification of the American dream.

Born in Budapest and raised in the United States, he became, through his fame, a sort of hero for all the immigrants. Many from his generation shared his same past: emigrated when still very young, he had to start working soon since, like in many cases, the parents weren’t able to acclimatize, to learn a new language, and the family support depended on the children’s jobs. A true self-made man and exceptional communicator, a great example of perfect image management and marketing, he succeeded in anticipating and absorbing the desires and fears of his spectators, in developing his stage personality around these and in selling his own visions.

Using objects of common use like the milk tank, the handcuffs or the wooden trunk helped to create a reference to everyday things, to a reality that was close to the audience. By appearing on stage next to his petite child-looking wife, he created a sense of domestic intimacy and attracted a wider crowd, made also of women and children. Being hung upside down, wrapped in a straitjacket, suspended hundreds of feet from the ground in the heart of the greatest American cities and right in front of local newspaper’s windows helped advertise these papers that would, then, advertise him.

But most of all, this image of Houdini, hung in this fashion, freeing himself in just few seconds and ending the performance with the arms wide opened as in a upside-down crucifix, is still incredibly strong. It is the image of an antichrist of physical strenght and intellect that spreads his wings before a vast crowd in a very elegant and picturesque “yes, we can.” In his Water Torture Cell, instead, he would be lowered, upside down and in chains, in a hermetically sealed glass box that would be , eventually, filled with water to the top. The agony in full view and the presence of axe-armed assistants on stage suffocated the audience with anguish. “It can’t be that he’ll come out of it, it just can’t be!” But Houdini would drag everyone on top of death to, actually, celebrate life, and to redefine together with the spectator the idea of the possible and the impossible. A magic trick, with the elegance of a liturgical gesture, is meant to deceive us for a moment with the illusion that between reality and dream there is no difference. That anything is possible.
Happy new year.

Sada Ranis
5.02.2012

Houdini: Art and Magic
Contemporary Jewish Museum
736, Mission Street
web: www.cjm.org

San Francisco, until January 16, 2012