Art and Artifice: And Other Essays of Illusion [Paperback]

Jim Steinmeyer (Author), Neil Gaiman (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2006

From the author of Hiding the Elephant and The Glorious Deception comes a collection of five essays that shows how the great stage illusions were integrally products of their time, based on the traditions and fashions of the people, and the offspring of the incredible, inventive personalities who brought them to the stage. Like no other author, Jim Steinmeyer gives us insight into the timeless appeal of magic. His human subjects include such characters as Steele MacKaye, Maskelyne, David Devant, P.T. Selbit, Horace Goldin, and Charles Morritt. Illusions he discusses include: The Mascot Moth, Sawing a Lady in Halves, and Morritt's Disappearing Donkey.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim Steinmeyer has invented many of the famous illusions used by leading magicians from Ricky Jay to Siegfried & Roy. He created David Copperfield’s vanish of the Statue of Liberty and has also designed magic for six Broadway shows and many other productions, including Mary Poppins, currently playing in London’s West End. He is the author of Hiding the Elephant, the Los Angeles Times bestseller, which Teller hailed as “a radiant celebration of the genius, glamour, and gargantuan egos of stage magic.”
Steinmeyer has researched and rediscovered many great illusions of the past and has written numerous technical books on magic history and the techniques of magic. He lectures on these subjects and is a contributing editor to Magic magazine, the leading independent magazine for magicians.
In addition, Steinmeyer has served as consultant and producer for magic television specials in the United States and Great Britain, and was a writer and producer for the A&E network’s four-hour history of the art, The Story of Magic. For several years, he served as a consultant and concept designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, developing theme park attractions for The Walt Disney Company.
Jim Steinmeyer lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Frankie Glass, an independent television producer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718064
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718061
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #749,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Magic & Illusion

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More Than the Magician's Hardware, February 23, 2007

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art and Artifice: And Other Essays of Illusion (Paperback)

The famous magician team Penn and Teller know that a good magic trick does not always depend on fooling the audience. Some of their tricks they do and show exactly how the trick works so the audience can follow along and appreciate not just the mechanics of the trick but also the stage artistry. It wouldn't be much fun if they did this for every trick, but in small doses, their demonstrations heighten the enjoyment of the audience by showing just how clever the workings of a specific trick can be. I think this is the right way to approach also _Art & Artifice and Other Essays on Illusion: Concerning the Inventors, Traditions, Evolution, & Rediscovery of Stage Magic_ (Carroll & Graf) by Jim Steinmeyer. The book is newly re-released after being out of print, and after Steinmeyer's success with other magic-themed books like _The Glorious Deception_ and _Hiding the Elephant_. Steinmeyer is himself a magician, and a designer of magical tricks used by others, so his writing on this subject is authoritative. There has been some backlash from magicians who feel that he is giving away secrets still being used on the stage, but though he does explain in print some specific effects and their histories, the explanations are nothing like seeing the trick itself. In fact, though I read some of the explanations a couple of times, and looked at the diagrams he has given, I realized how much I wanted to see the actual trick, and how much more I would enjoy seeing the effect not despite but because of knowing its mechanics.

The five essays here describe the interwoven lives of some famous and some relatively unknown magicians in pursuit of illusion. The first tells the performance history of the American magician and theatrical illusionist Steele MacKaye, whose tragic failure of a huge auditorium at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair was due to his simple disregard for the practicalities of getting the job done. Then there is the history of "The Moth in the Spotlight", a classic illusion devised by David Devant in 1905, and recreated by Steinmeyer for the 1982 Broadway musical _Merlin_ with Doug Henning. The recreation not only required special hardware, but in every performance the actions of five people, two above stage and three below, had to be perfectly synchronized to make the Moth disappear. Steinmeyer says, "The secret was every bit as wonderful as the result on stage, and maybe even more wonderful." It would be fun to be able to compare. One chapter is the wonderful history of the classic trick "Sawing a Woman in Half", which I was surprised to find had been invented by one man, the British illusionist P. T. Selbit who introduced it in 1921. It was a sensation, immediately copied and sent worldwide by rival troupes. The final two chapters of this entertaining book are both titled "Mister Morritt's Donkey", with the first being "In Theory" and the second "In Practice". Charles Morritt created many memorable illusions, with the Disappearing Donkey under examination here. In examining Morritt's illusion, it is clear that "it's all done with mirrors" is much too dismissive an explanation. Using mirrors, Morritt got results "... nothing short of alchemy." After much research, Steinmeyer brought the illusion to life again, before the Los Angeles Conference on Magic History in 1995. Tracking down the secret and making it work read like a detective novel with plenty of clues and red herrings (and broken mirrors) along the way.

_Art and Artifice_ is a lovely book that explains some tricks, but more importantly explains what it is magicians do, and why we love to be fooled by them. Anyone looking here for a quick explanation of "How did they do that?" will be disappointed; the explanations are here, but they are thoughtful and full of anecdotes of magic history and magicians with oversized personalities. "How did they do that?" proves to have fascinating answers that go well beyond the magician's bag of tricks.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars solid contribution to history of magic, May 2, 2008

By 

James J. Lippard "skeptic" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art and Artifice: And Other Essays of Illusion (Paperback)

This is a reissue of a collection of five Steinmeyer essays about illusion originally published in 1998 which contains some overlap with his more recent books, Vanishing the Elephant and The Glorious Deception. This book is less polished and comprehensive, but is still quite interesting and well-documented, as those other two books are.

The first of the five essays discusses Steel MacKaye, John Nevil Maskelyne, and David Devant, the latter two of which are familiar to readers of Steinmeyer's other books. The essay is about the use of illusion in a grand scale on the theater stage, where MacKaye had some of the grandest ideas. The bulk of the essay is about MacKaye's desire to build "The Spectatorium," a special theater seating 12,000 that included a miniature ocean on which 3/4 scale ships could sail to show the story of Columbus' discovery of the New World. This was intended to be built for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but it ran overbudget and behind schedule, and was never completed.

The second essay is about David Devant's "The Mascot Moth," and Steinmeyer's recreation of the illusion for Doug Henning's "Merlin" show--also familiar to those who have read Steinmeyer's other works.

The third essay is about the history and development of the "sawing a lady in half" illusion, and its relation to Grand Guignol. The fourth and fifth essays are about Steinmeyer's rediscovery and reproduction of Morritt's Disappearing Donkey illusion, a topic also familiar to readers of Vanishing an Elephant.

This isn't an essential purchase for those who have read Steinmeyer's other books--it's not as satisfying a work as the other two masterful books I've mentioned. It is, however, something that does stand on its own and is well worth reading for those interested in the history of magic.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK but not great, January 9, 2007

By 

Mark R. Hassed "Deep Thinker" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art and Artifice: And Other Essays of Illusion (Paperback)

I have just finished reading "Hiding the Elephant" by the same author and was disappointed to find a lot of the stories repeated. "Hiding the Elephant" is a superior book so I'd buy that and forget about this one.