El Mago (de) Matthew Barney: Influencias Renacentistas en el Ciclo Cremaster

In this article we will try to offer a new interpretation of the video art work of the artist Matthew Barney (California, 1967) the Cremaster Cycle, approaching a more humanistic and less biological vision, the last one being the principal study aspect for the experts on Matthew Barney. We will focus on the character of the Magician, a key figure in the Cremaster Cycle. The Magician lighting the pass to a possible interpretation of the Cycle in Renaissance key, the magician character while being a personification of aesthetic- artistic interests of Matthew Barney is also an approximation to the ideal of the Renaissance man: philosopher, magician, healer. Alter-ego of Matthew Barney, the escape artist Harry Houdini represents (and through him all other magical branches) a possible link with the powerful magician Renaissance described by the philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), able to metamorphose, influence in the sensitivities of his objects, through self-knowledge and knowledge of the Divine.

HOUDINI AMONG THE SPIRITS: A LESSON IN CRITICAL THINKING

In spite of the widespread recognition of critical thinking as an elementary aim of education, and an important tool for people to evaluate information and make reasonable decisions in their daily lives, to think critically is a difficult task. We are consciously and unconsciously biased, and our basic beliefs strongly influence the way we assess evidence, so our cognitive default condition seems to move us away from critical thinking. However, it is possible appropriately to exercise critical thinking to evaluate subjects to which we are emotionally attached, and the experience of the illusionist Harry Houdini investigating Spiritualism is a striking example of it. My objective here is to discuss how Houdini incorporated core elements of critical thinking, such as the ability to evaluate reasons, and the disposition to calibrate his beliefs accordingly, in his assessment of the claim that Spiritualist mediums could contact the spirits of dead people, as described in his book A Magician among the Spirits.