Harry Houdini exhibit to appear at Skirball Cultural Center
This is the first major art show to explore the showman. Props and devices from all of Houdini's major tricks are on hand. The exhibit will include contemporary art inspired by the escape artist.
Studio photograph of Harry Houdini in white trunks and chains, circa 1905. (Skirball Cultural Center)
By Barbara Isenberg, Special to the Los Angeles Times
April 24, 2011
Reporting from New York —— Ehrich Weiss, the Budapest-born son of an immigrant family, ran away from home at 12 to join the circus. Not the least bit interested in becoming a rabbi like his father, he wanted to be an entertainer.
Although Weiss was already an accomplished trapeze artist in a neighborhood circus, he soon turned around and headed back home. But it was only a matter of time before the whole world knew who he was. Reinventing himself as Harry Houdini, the rabbi's son became a celebrity as an escape artist, and, by the time of his death in 1926 — on Halloween — a legend.
Handcuffed, chained, manacled, put in a straitjacket or locked within small containers, the nimble Houdini was dropped into water, dangled in the air and even stuffed into a coffin and buried. A master of marketing, he often performed for free in front of newspaper offices to enormous crowds — and newspaper photographers — on the eve of his paid performances.
He would even hire his own cameramen to film his escapes for use in his lectures, says art curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport.
"In his day, Houdini was so famous not only because he was a master showman on stage but also because he was able to promote his work to a broad public," says Rapaport. "His significance endures because of the visual record — the posters, photographs, film and magic apparatus — that we have today."read more at:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-houdini-20110424,0,2265092.story
Although Weiss was already an accomplished trapeze artist in a neighborhood circus, he soon turned around and headed back home. But it was only a matter of time before the whole world knew who he was. Reinventing himself as Harry Houdini, the rabbi's son became a celebrity as an escape artist, and, by the time of his death in 1926 — on Halloween — a legend.
Handcuffed, chained, manacled, put in a straitjacket or locked within small containers, the nimble Houdini was dropped into water, dangled in the air and even stuffed into a coffin and buried. A master of marketing, he often performed for free in front of newspaper offices to enormous crowds — and newspaper photographers — on the eve of his paid performances.
He would even hire his own cameramen to film his escapes for use in his lectures, says art curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport.
"In his day, Houdini was so famous not only because he was a master showman on stage but also because he was able to promote his work to a broad public," says Rapaport. "His significance endures because of the visual record — the posters, photographs, film and magic apparatus — that we have today."read more at:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-houdini-20110424,0,2265092.story
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