The Message: Art and Occultism

Occult practices, séances and magic have traditionally been met with suspicion in the world of high culture, but they are currently getting a fresh look. Turns out, they have long had a quiet influence on art--at least since the mid-1800s. The Message demonstrates this fascinating history with paranormal-influenced paintings, drawings and thought photographs, a term for the phenomenon of imprinting an image from one's mind directly onto a photographic medium--something we've all at least wished we could do... By the early eighteenth century, the occult had found a home in the arts with the advent of Surrealism--in 1933, André Breton discussed these inexplicable phenomena in his text, The Automatic Message. This publication borrows its name from Breton's text; and features early-twentieth-century photographs of séances from the archive of parapsychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, which vividly illustrate Breton's ideas.