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La
grande
Opere scelte Selected artworks
dalla Collezione from the UniCredit
UniCredit Art Collection

magia
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 indice contents

Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, Presidente Bologna Musei Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, President of Bologna Musei
Giuseppe Vita, Presidente UniCredit Giuseppe Vita, Chairman of UniCredit

La Grande Magia. La struttura di un’indagine La Grande Magia. Structure of an Investigation

Gianfranco Maraniello Gianfranco Maraniello

A Kind of Magic: guardare alla Collezione d’Arte UniCredit A Kind of Magic: Seeing the UniCredit Art Collection
sotto una luce speciale in a special light
Bärbel Kopplin Bärbel Kopplin

Opere works
Walter Guadagnini Walter Guadagnini

Il mago moderno e la pittura antica The modern magician and ancient painting
Qualunque incanto magia Any spell is magic
La vertebra della balena A whale vertebra
Ricettari, corpi e crogiuoli Cookbooks, bodies and crucibles
Il linguaggio e le regole del gioco The language and rules of the game
Gli astuti icneumoni The wily ichneumons
L’officina di pigmalione Pygmalion’s workshop
Dodici lavatrici e la rottura dell’ordine Twelve washing machines and the destruction of order
L’illusione della negromanzia The illusion of necromancy

La magia nella cultura occidentale: tra disincanto, Magic in western culture: disenchantment,
modernit e arte modernity and art
Marco Pasi Marco Pasi

Letture, usi, censure e buoni affari. Readings, uses, censorship and good business.
Il libro di magia fra rappresentazioni e pratiche Books of magic: representations and practices
Federico Barbierato Federico Barbierato

Cinema e magia Cinema and magic

Antonio Somaini Antonio Somaini

referenze iconografiche Iconographic references


champ e poi nel Surrealismo, sembra dare all’artista un potere taumaturgico che esula
sempre di più dal gesto tecnico tradizionale. L’oggetto trovato casualmente, il ready-
made, viene trasmutato in oggetto artistico attraverso il tocco magico dell’artista. L’og-
getto acquisisce così un’“aura” che cancella la sua banalità originaria e lo rende mira-
colosamente unico. Questo procedimento non è in fondo dissimile da quello della
produzione di un talismano o di un feticcio. Senza dubbio si potrebbe sostenere (ed è
stato sostenuto) che si tratti piuttosto di una semplice illusione da prestigiatore. Tutta-
via, come per la magia tradizionale, la questione più interessante non è sapere se si celi
davvero una particolare realtà metafisica dietro un’operazione magica, ma osservare le
conseguenze materiali, sociali ed economiche provocate dalla credenza che questa real-
tà è stata efficacemente manipolata e che ciò ha in effetti prodotto dei risultati concreti.
162 Il secondo aspetto riguarda la centralità crescente del corpo nel discorso artistico,
sotto forma di body art o di performance. Il lavoro sul corpo per farne gesto artistico
può avvicinarsi, consapevolmente o meno, a modelli di ritualità magica. La performan-
Marco pasi La magia nella cultura occidentale
ce artistica non ha ovviamente solo un valore di rappresentazione visiva per chi vi assi-
ste, ma anche, se non soprattutto, di esperienza trasformativa da parte di chi la com-
Nome artista, pie. In questo senso, può avvicinarsi a quelle forme di esplorazione magica del sé che
Nome opera, anno
sono proprio state interpretate da Alex Owen e da altri autori come essenziali per capi-
re il rapporto complesso tra movimenti occultistici e cultura moderna. Un rapporto in
fin dei conti assai meno conflittuale e antagonistico di quello che il paradigma positivi-
sta aveva presupposto.
D’altra parte, una certa retorica dell’arte moderna e contemporanea facilita un ac-
costamento al mondo della magia. L’idea che l’arte offra uno spazio relativamente pro-
tetto per la trasgressione di norme non solo estetiche, ma anche morali, sociali e poli-
tiche, può rendere un fenomeno essenzialmente trasgressivo e antinomico come la
magia particolarmente attraente.
L’arte può insomma offrire all’uomo contemporaneo delle forme di esperienza di sé
e del mondo circostante che, in altri contesti e con altri linguaggi, erano a suo tempo
offerte dal mondo della magia. Se questo è vero, ne dobbiamo concludere che la magia,
lungi dall’essere stata dissolta dalla luce della razionalità moderna, ha trovato nuovi
spazi per trasformarsi e prosperare. Spazi che possono prendere la forma dei templi
laici delle gallerie e dei musei di arte moderna e contemporanea.
Magic in Western Culture:
Disenchantment, Modernity
and Art
Marco Pasi
The problem of magic 163
In Western culture few words have such a long, complex and semantically fragmented
history as “magic”. Beyond the meaning we intend to attribute to it, the word itself seems to
possess a special vitality and energy, which has not faded with the passing of the centuries.
There must be deeply-rooted reasons if this term still continues to arouse the same contrast-
ing feelings and emotional reactions today as it did 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece. The
world of magic – even when we do not know exactly what it encompasses or promises – fasci-
nates, attracts, baffles, and scares us. In this way it presents the characteristics that Freud
attributed to the Unheimliche, the uncanny, which simultaneously attracts and repels, and
depending on when and how it is seen, can seem either reassuringly familiar or as disturbing
as something that is completely alien.1 We can smile about it on a sunny afternoon, but it will
be back to haunt us when night falls and things are but shadows around us.
So, what is “magic”? What is it about this long-lived and ubiquitous term that remains
somehow elusive? In the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, the newly-emerging
social sciences, especially anthropology, sociology and psychology, systematically sought
to define magic as a universal human phenomenon that could not be compared to others,
whose place of action could be found as much in the evolution of culture as in the struc-
tures of social relations, and in dynamics of the mind. In these theorizations, magic was
often compared to other, purportedly universal, categories, in particular “science” and
“religion”, thus forming a triad whose simplicity was supposed to embrace the basic range
of the human experience of reality. These theoretical formulations presented themselves
as purely scientific, but their systematic oppositions often resulted in reviving old theo-
logical and philosophical arguments, of which they were therefore the unwitting heirs.
The classic magic–religion–science triangle emerges very clearly in the late-19th-century
British anthropology school, whose authors include Edward B. Tylor and James G. Frazer.
1
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, Penguin Books, London, 2003.

164
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
The latter developed a systematic theory of magic in The Golden Bough, a monumental work
that deeply fascinated several generations of artists and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th
century. For Frazer – as for Tylor before him – magic is linked to a primitive stage of human
2
evolution when humanity had not yet learned to distinguish between subjective and objective
reality. The human mind was naive and impressionable, and convinced that if two objects
were similar or came into contact, there must necessarily be an invisible bond between them.
Acting on one, there would therefore have been a remote effect on the other. According to
Frazer, it was a flaw of primitive human reasoning that projected its mental connections out-
side of itself and objectivized them in the physical reality around it. From this point on, hu-
mans slowly switched to a more advanced phase, characterized by religion, in which divine
entities were attributed with superhuman powers that affected reality. The only relationship
possible with these divinities was one of reverence and submission. With time, and through
the evolution of culture, humanity was able to develop a more adequate understanding of real-
ity. Entering the modern era, humans actually reached the final stage, that of science, through
which they finally freed themselves from the superstitions of the past, discovering the natural
laws that govern the world, and that not even hypothetical deities could supersede. Human
thinking is now adult and mature, and knows how to distinguish confidently between mental
phenomena and physical realities. Today it is easy for us to understand how this modern
superiority over the primitive, validated by the anthropological thought of the time, was able
to provide often quite explicit ideological support for European colonial rule, where indigenous
peoples were considered surviving life forms lagging on the evolutionary scale, therefore in
need of guidance and administration by a more advanced culture.
The early 20 -century French sociology school had a different approach, with authors
th
like Durkheim, Mauss and Hubert,3 who were less interested in the mechanisms of hu-
man thought and evolutionist paradigms. Durkheim and his colleagues first wanted to
understand elementary forms of social structures, and for this reason they, too, often
based their analysis on “primitive” cultures in which these elementary forms could be
more easily observed. Thus, on the basis of these considerations, they believed it was
possible to distinguish between religion and magic by their respective social function.
While religion plays a positive social role, as it serves to keep the community solid, with
shared values that underpin the interests of the group as a whole, magic is the expression
of individual, private and selfish interests, like harming an enemy, or increasing per-
sonal wealth. Religion is therefore practiced in public, with rites and institutions that
2
James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Dover Books, New York, 2002.
3
See, in particular Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, Routledge, London-New York, 2001; Émile
Durkheim, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Le origini dei poteri magici. Tre studi classici di antropologia e
sociologia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 1965.
require the consent and participation of the whole community. Magic, however, is an es-
sentially antisocial phenomenon, and this would be the reason why many cultures fear
and prohibit it, forcing it to be practiced in secret.
Psychology has also addressed magic. In this field, one of the most significant authors
is Jean Piaget, a Swiss who researched chiefly the development of cognitive abilities in
children.4 He was influenced by the ideas of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl with regard to “pre-logi-
cal” and participative mentality in primitive peoples, and argued that during their devel-
opment children undergo a phase characterized by magical-type thinking. Up to three
years of age, children do not perceive the external limits of self clearly and therefore be-
lieve they can directly affect the world around them with their thoughts or actions. This
phase of magical thinking is then discarded when the child reaches more mature stages
of awareness and perception of reality. 165
These “classic” examples of theoretical reflection on magic, dating to the late 19 and th
first half of the 20th centuries, are just some of those that could be mentioned, and are
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
important because they lead to a reflection. In all these cases, “magic” is described as
something foreign and outdated compared to the values of modern Western culture. In-
deed, magic is seen variously as primitive, anti-social or childish, so it is presumed that
modern humanity, if it participates fully and consciously in obtaining civilization, is then
emancipated from retrograde cultural forms identified as “magic”. Thus magic is pre-
sented as the domain of what is other than oneself, different, exotic. Yet it is also a domain
that looks strangely familiar, because we have travelled it in the distant past, despite
having long since left it behind us.
It is interesting to note that even those historians who explored magic as late as the
1960s and beyond, made extensive use of theoretical considerations developed in the
fields of sociology and anthropology. One of these historians was Lynn Thorndike, prob-
ably the most important of all with his vast History of Magic and Experimental Science,
published in eight volumes between 1923 and 1958.5 Another is Keith Thomas with his
Religion and the Decline of Magic, published in 1971.6 Two important points should be
kept in mind with respect to this historiography. One is that precisely the use of catego-
ries borrowed from the social sciences led these historians to consider magic as some-
thing easily identifiable and definable, with reference to particular perceptions of the
world or to certain types of behaviour; the second is that extensive historical recon-
structions of these authors were in accordance with Weber’s paradigm of “disenchant-
4
See Jean Piaget, Main Trends in Psychology, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1973 2000.
5
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vv., Columbia University Press, New York,
1923-58.
6
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-
Century England, Penguin, London, 1991.

166
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
ment of the world” (“Entzauberung der Welt”), and were more generally influenced by
the Enlightenment and subsequent Positivist concept of progress, so magic was doomed,
like any other superstition, to disappear in the face of fast advancing modernity. Magic
and modernity were therefore conceived as sharing a relationship of antithesis and
mutual exclusion, and not of a possible coexistence or even synergy. It was taken for
granted that the spread of modernity to increasingly large areas of society and culture
would gradually bring extinction to magic.
These approaches to the problem of magic began to face a crisis after the Second World
War, mainly by virtue of two types of problematization. The first was the realization that
the concept of magic had its own specific history, which basically belonged to Western
culture, and for this reason could hardly be generalized and applied to other cultures. This
then led to criticism precisely of those meta-historical and cross-cultural definitions of
magic that had been typical of the social sciences until that time. One of the first to de-
velop a critique of this kind, applied to the universalist definitions of magic, was the British
anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Pritchard. As early as the 1930s, with several essays,
and more fully in the 1960s with his Theories of Primitive Religion (1965), this anthropolo-
gist subjected these definitions to a penetrating critical examination. However, the author7
who progressed furthest in the process of deconstruction of the concept of magic the
1960s was Ernesto De Martino, an Italian historian of religions and anthropologist. In
1962, a few years before his untimely death, De Martino published his last book, Magia e
civiltà, a commented anthology of contemporary interpretations of and theories about
8
magic. In the introduction, De Martino explained that the book was part of a much broad-
er and ambitious project, namely the development of a critical analysis of the wide-ranging
history of the notion of magic in Western culture. It was not, therefore, a case of beginning
with a sociological or anthropological definition of magic that would eventually be applied
retroactively to historical investigation, but rather of understanding the way in which the
concept of magic took shape, then to follow its historical progress, seeking to understand
what meanings it had assumed and which functions it had performed in specific cultural
and social contexts. De Martino was of the opinion that magic had played a central role in
the construction of the Western World’s cultural identity, particularly in the light of what
he called the “anti-magic controversy”, to which we will return.
More recently, authors like Randall Styers and Bernd-Christian Otto have continued
to study the genealogical, discursive and historiographical analysis of the concept of
7
Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, “The Intellectualist (English) Interpretation of Magic”, Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts,
University of Egypt, I, 2 (Dec. 1933), 283-311; and also, Theories of Primitive Religion, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965.
8
Ernesto De Martino, Magia e civiltà, Garzanti, Milano, 1962.
magic.9 For them, as for De Martino, the problem is no longer one of “defining” magic in
an abstract sense, but rather of going to the roots of its construction as a cultural cate-
gory, and showing how Western culture constructs its identity through the expression of
ideological tensions and conflicts. Styers, in particular, wondered about the role played
by the concept of magic in the development of Western humanity’s modern conscious-
ness. Taking the cue from Michel Foucault, Styers looked at three types of “arguments”
regarding magic that have been used to define the boundaries of what is and is not licit in
many dimensions of culture: religious piety, rationality and sexuality. Namely that “mag-
ic” was used as a container to collect anything that was perceived as incompatible with
the development of modernity, and that it was therefore necessary to expel or remove.
The second type of problematization began to appear especially in the 1970s and was
based on the realization that the paradigms of world secularization and disenchantment 167
seemed to be contradicted by the increasingly evident presence, even in highly urbanized
and industrialized Western areas (namely those supposedly at the forefront of the process
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
of social and cultural emancipation of the masses), of various alternative forms of reli-
gious practice, often of a magical or occult type. The so-called “sociology occult” group,
developed by a number of American sociologists, above all Edward Tiryakian and Mar-
cello Truzzi, were particularly involved in this.10 More recently, especially since the end of
the 1980s, the complex issues of contemporary religious practices of the magic type have
been absorbed by a new and rapidly expanding field of study that researches new reli-
gious movements. Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne has published several impor-
tant studies precisely on these themes, starting with his Il cappello del mago (1990).11
These new approaches to understanding the “problem” of magic offer some food for
thought. First, it should be clear that the process of deconstructing the concept of magic,
initiated chiefly by De Martino and later developed by other authors, led to the “anti-
magical polemic” being perceived as a fundamental characteristic of the historical forma-
tion of this concept. We have seen how the definition of magic offered by anthropologists,
sociologists and psychologists, mainly before the Second World War, but in part also after,
invariably presupposed a negative judgement. This judgement was actually a legacy (of-
ten unconscious) of a much older cultural tradition.
9
Randall Styers, Making Magic. Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World, Oxford University Press,
Oxford-New York, 2004; Bernd-Christian Otto, Magie: Rezeptions- Und Diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der
Antike bis zur Neuzeit, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2011. See also the introduction to Michael Stausberg and
Bernd-Christian Otto (ed.), Defining Magic. A Reader, Equinox Publishing, Sheffield, 2013.
10
See, above all, Edward A. Tiryakian (ed.), On the Margin of the Visible. Sociology, the Esoteric, and the Occult,
John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1974; Marcello Truzzi, “Towards a Sociology of the Occult: Notes on Modern
Witchcraft”, in: Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (ed.), Religious Movements in Contemporary America,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974, pp. 628-45.
11
Massimo Introvigne, Il cappello del mago. I nuovi movimenti magici, dallo spiritismo al satanismo, Sugarco, Milano,1990.

168
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
Deeply-rooted prohibitions, rejections, disapproval, limitations, worries, and fears have
become stratified in the concept of magic as it has developed in the context of Western cul-
ture. Historically, the concept served to indicate what was considered unlawful, profane, or
sinful. In a sense, this negative and controversial connotation began with the origin of the
term in ancient Greece, since it had been imported from neighbouring Persia, where “magoi”
were a special priestly class.12 The Persian Empire, with its repeated attempts to expand and
conquer westwards, was seen by the Greeks as the quintessential enemy and “magic” was
defined as a set of exotic practices introduced by foreign “professionals of the sacred” who
offered their services for a fee, outside of and in contrast to accepted religious practices.
The subsequent history of the concept is then interspersed with moments in which the
term “magic” is used to stigmatize and sometimes persecute heterodox religious communi-
ties or groups perceived as foreign to the recognized and legitimized social body. In the
history of Western culture one of the salient moments of this “anti-magical polemic”, for
instance, is the phase of the affirmation of early Christianity, when pagan religious prac-
tices began to be viewed by Christians as forms of magic and pagan gods are treated as
demons. Another significant moment was that of the Reformation, when Protestant theo-
logians accused Catholics of perverting Christ’s original message and attributing a magic
value to the sacraments. There followed the Scientific Revolution, with its attempt to define
the limits of empirically and rationally founded knowledge, relegating other forms of knowl-
edge to the illusory and deceptive dimension of magic. In the wake of this enduring per-
spective, the definitions of magic offered by sociologists and anthropologists in the late 19
and the first half of the 20th century, far from being neutral and purely objective, simply
revived, sometimes even formally, old religious disputes.
The crucial point of this interpretation of the “magic problem” is that magic becomes
one of the keys to understanding how Western culture has developed. Precisely because
magic has served as a container for the removal of unwanted cultural forms, it enables
observation of the strategies and the dynamics with which Western culture - and more
specifically modernity - has made positive, characterizing choices. In a kind of dialectical
process, the identification of the illicit is the reverse side of defining the licit and outlining
clearly what was once confused and indistinct. It was through this process of reflection
on its “dark side” that the West built the various positive images of its identity, and why
the concept of magic played a key role, albeit in a negative dialectic sense, both in the
history of Western culture and the construction of modern awareness.
This, however, leads to a second consideration. Having established that the history of the
concept of magic is strongly marked by its controversial use, it must also be conceded that
See, above all (Italian only), Walter Burkert, Da Omero ai Magi. La tradizione orientale nella cultura greca,
12
Marsilio, Venezia, 1999.
this history cannot be reduced to this aspect alone. Magic is not only a tool for exclusion and
accusation, but also the field of positive identification by people who claim its efficacy as a
means of bringing about transformations of reality. Since ancient times there have been
testimonies of authors who assert their identity as practitioners of magic, and in the Renais-
sance, of course, often highly speculative and philosophically complex magical theories
flourished. The history of the concept of magic as De Martino saw it must therefore focus not
only on moments of rejection and denial, but also, as Bernd-Christian Otto recently reiter-
ated, on moments of self-identification and positive affirmation. A historiography focusing
on these aspects, especially for the Renaissance period, had already been developed in the
1960s by authors like Frances A. Yates and D. P. Walker, at London’s Warburg Institute.13
The third point worth pondering is that the tendency to a deconstructionist interpreta-
tion of magic, which conforms, in any case, to a widespread fashion in the human sci- 169
ences in the last two decades, has indeed led to a more mature historical understanding
of the problem, but also risks the opposite extreme.14 The idea that preconceived and
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
generalized definitions of magic are to be avoided, and that its meaning and function
should be considered only in limited and specific historical contexts, has led to a fragmen-
tation of the concept itself, which now threatens to trickle away into micro-analysis. Are
there only epistemological dividesin this matter, or are there also aspects of continuity?
Does it still make sense to speak of “magic” in a general sense, even restricted to the scope
of Western culture? In my view, it is possible to identify typical elements that seem to re-
th
cur show themselves repeatedly throughout the historical evolution of the concept of
magic, even with all the changes and adaptations arising. Here, an in-depth analysis of
these aspects is not possible, so I will simply offer a brief overview.
The first element lies in the fact that magic usually presents itself as a technique. Even
in its most refined and intellectually sophisticated versions, magic never seems to lose its
trait as a kind of knowledge that provides the means to an end. It is primarily for this
reason that many anthropologists (including, above all, Frazer himself) have considered
it a primitive form of science. The “magician” is usually perceived as a person who knows
how to make amazing things happen and therefore has access to special sources of
power. Considering the history of magic in a long-term perspective, it can be seen that the
aims usually assigned to magic are of two kinds: material and spiritual. The first relates
to worldly desires and needs, like money, human affections, health, protection from or
attack of enemies, and control of the environment. The second type refers on the other
13
See, above all, Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, The University of Chicago
Press, Chicago-London, 1964; and D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella, The
Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park (PA), 2000.
14
On this point, please refer to my “Theses de magia”, Societas Magica Newsletter, 20 (2008), pp. 1-8.

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hand to otherworldly aspirations, like the fate of the individual after death, salvation,
perfection or spiritual fulfilment. Both types can be observed in a wide variety of historical
texts and phenomena associated with magic.
The second element lies in the fact that magic usually involves the presence of ritual-
istic behaviour, namely the formalization of a series of gestures that receive their meaning
and effect exactly because they form a coherent whole.
Having established that magic has a technical and ritual nature, these other two elements
relate to the ways in which it should work. The first of these consists of mediations. This is the
idea that magic works through the intervention of preter-human entities, or through ma-
nipulation of invisible forces or fluids. These mediations allow the individual to interact with
reality in order to obtain results that would be unobtainable by ordinary means. The second
element is constituted by correspondences. The underlying idea is that the universe is perme-
ated in all its parts by a network of qualitative relations. For example, a star can be con-
nected to a kind of metal, a colour, a plant, a day of the week, and a part of the human body.
There is no causal relationship between these objects: the bond that unites them is simply
part of the natural structure of things. Thus, by acting on an object, immediate reactions can
be caused in other objects that are linked to it. If the system of relations is known, it is conse-
quently possible to operate meaningfully on reality and achieve the desired results.
These elements are found in various combinations in many discussions associated
with magic. The last two, in particular, are highly problematic in the context of Western
culture. The first because the interaction with preter-human entities that is not sanc-
tioned by religious authority is often interpreted as diabolic; the latter because corre-
spondences behave in an a-causal manner and are thus identified, especially since the
Scientific Revolution, with irrational and illusory forms of thought.
Magic, modernity and art
As we have seen, the Enlightenment and Positivist prejudice that deemed magic to be a
form of superstition that would eventually disappear from highly evolved Western societies,
proved to be illusory. Magic was not killed by modernity. Indeed, several authors, like Alex
Owen, argued that magic contributed greatly to shaping the modern consciousness of West-
ern societies.15 As a transformative experience and as an exploration of self, for example,
magic anticipates and accompanies the development of psychoanalysis. On the other hand,
an interest in magic and other occult themes can be found in a plethora of artists and writers
from the late 1800s to the present. How can we interpret this intense and meaningful rela-
15
Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment. British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, The University of
Chicago Press, Chicago-London, 2004.
tionship? In part, the roots are undoubtedly to be sought in Romanticism and its positive
revaluation in an artistic and literary key, in a series of experiences and models related to
the world of magic and esotericism in general. But perhaps even more interesting in this
context are the developments occurring in modern art. For example, the role of the avant-
garde in the early 20th century lends itself to several considerations. It has long been known
that various key figures in these artistic movements were strongly interested in esoteric
themes. No doubt the influence of these issues played an important role in the development
of new form languages, like abstraction, but other, perhaps less obvious aspects are equally
interesting and more specifically in relation to the problem of magic. On one hand, the con-
ceptualization and dematerialization of the artwork that begins in artists like Duchamp and
is then developed by Surrealism, seems to give the artist transformative powers that in-
creasingly neglect traditional forms of artistic technique. The “objet trouvé”, the ready- 171
made, is transmuted into an art object through the artist’s magic touch. The object thus
acquires an “aura” that erases its original banality and miraculously makes it unique. This
Marco pasi Magic in Western Culture
process is not dissimilar to that of producing a talisman or a fetish. No doubt it could be
argued (and has been argued) that this is just an illusion created with a stage magician’s
tricks. However, as with traditional magic, the most interesting point at issue is not to know
whether a particular metaphysical reality is actually concealed behind a magical operation,
but to observe all the material, social and economic consequences caused by the belief that
this reality has effectively been manipulated, and has actually produced concrete results.
The second aspect concerns the increasing centrality of the body in artistic discourse,
in the form of body art or performance. Working on the body as an artistic act can - con-
sciously or otherwise – come close to models of magic ritual. The artistic performance has
a value not only as a visual representation for those see it, but also, or even most of all, as
a transformative experience on the part of those who take part in it as actors. In this
sense, it can approach those forms of magical exploration of self that are interpreted by
Alex Owen and other authors as being crucial to understanding the complex relationship
between occult movements and modern culture. A relationship that is ultimately far less
conflictual than the positivist paradigm had assumed.
On the other hand, a certain rhetoric of modern and contemporary art facilitates an ap-
proach to the world of magic. The idea that art provides a relatively protected space for
breaking not only aesthetic but also moral, social, and political rules, can make an essen-
tially transgressive and antinomian phenomenon like magic particularly attractive. In short,
art can offer contemporary humanity forms of experience of self and the surrounding world
that, in other contexts and with other languages, were once offered by the world of magic. If
this is true, we must then conclude that magic, far from being dissolved by the light of mod-
ern rationality, has found new areas for transforming itself and thriving. Spaces that can
take the form of the lay temples of modern and contemporary art: galleries and museums.