Outside Event: Houdini: Art and Magic

I recently went to the Jewish contemporary museum to see the Houdini exhibit. I've always had a bit of a facination with magic and therefore knew of Houdini, but this exhibit gave me a full picture of the kind of person he was. Houdini was not just a magician, he was an artist. His canvas was his body and the situations he would get his body into. The true art form was the way he got out of them. The idea of body as art is not unfamiliar, artists all the time use themselves in their art to express feelings of internal conflict, etc. Houdini's work is extremely valuable to the idea of the body as art, and the theatrics their-in. I admired his use of essentially wiggling to a fine craft.