Exhibition uncovers rich history of local magicians’ scene
Tired of hearing about the history of magic in other countries, Kobe Van Herwegen decided to look closer to home and found a long and rich local tradition, which he documents in a new book and exhibition in Ghent
Art, not entertainment
Magic started in the fairgrounds, according to a new book by father and son Christ and Kobe Van Herwegen, which covers the surprisingly rich history of magic in Belgium, all the way up to the 18th century, although as a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch shows, it had been around long before then. Chapeau, de geheime goochelgeschiedenis van België (Chapeau, the Secret History of Belgian Magic) is accompanied by an exhibition of the same name in Ghent’s offbeat Huis Van Alijn museum, which contributed many of the pieces on show.
Kobe Van Herwegen was bitten by the magic bug at the age of six, when he found an old magic book in the attic. From a boyhood dream to become a magician, he built a career, becoming the house magician for the Flemish children’s TV channel Ketnet, performing live on stage and acting as a magic consultant for other performers.
“I’ve always been interested in the history of magic, but I was fed up reading books about the history of magic in Britain and France,” he tells me as we go round the exhibition. “We didn’t even know when we started, my father and me, that we have our own history, and a very rich one. In our archives, we now have more than 1,500 magicians recorded. And also, nobody else was looking at this rich history.”
The magic ceiling
Suzy Wandas is one of the biggest stars of Belgian magic, all the more so by virtue of being a woman. As a child, she saw the great Talma, a British magician, perform and she herself played in her parents’ theatre, where she took lessons from Philippe De Bisschop.
It’s unusual for a woman to be prominent in magic
“It’s unusual for a woman to be prominent in magic,” says Van Herwegen. “What’s interesting is that there are a few important women in magic history, but all of those women have some connection with Belgium. They’re either Flemish, they were born in Belgium, or they were born elsewhere but their parents are Belgian. It’s a strange coincidence.”
The Wandas began as a family act, slightly above the rather louche world of the fairground. The family had their own theatre.
“The act was the father’s and when he died the work was too hard for the mother and children alone, so they took a different act into the theatres,” Van Herwegen explains. “Then the First World War broke out, and the son had to go to the front. When he came back, he couldn’t do it anymore, so mother and daughter carried on together under the name The Wandas.”
Wartime tricks
In the end, though, Suzy Wandas was too good. The mother stopped, while Suzy went on to become famous in Europe. Then, one day at a world fair in Brussels, she met an American, Dr Zina Bennett, and she returned with him to his country. But before doing so, she performed here in Belgium one last time, her last appearance before going to live in America.
“When she was 90, she was given an award by America’s biggest magic circle, sort of the lifetime achievement Oscar for magicians,” Van Herwegen explains.
One of the most striking other local figures is Servais Le Roy, who worked with Talma, and their most famous trick – it seems hackneyed to us now – was what is known as Ashra levitation. “Talma was lying on a table with a cloth over her and she levitated into the air. Le Roy took the cloth away and she had vanished. People still do that trick today.”
Josmah, real name Jan Jozef Smans, also started out as a boy and spent the First World War doing tricks for his brothers in arms in camps, barracks and field hospitals where he worked as a cook. He worked as a conjurer at fairgrounds, fairs and small halls before reinventing himself as a fakir, but also as a crusader of sorts against the unscrupulous.
The real thing
When all is said and done, magic is a business of deception, but there is good deception and bad. Nowadays, performers like Penn & Teller, Derren Brown and the Flemish mind-reader Gili go out of their way to uncover the secrets behind their tricks. Audiences pay to see a show knowing it’s not magic but trickery, and everyone is happy with that sort of deception.
Making magic is like making music
The trickery is of a different order when it comes to spiritualists, those people who claim to be able to contact the dead. Then, the audience’s scepticism seems to desert them, and people are prepared to believe the hucksters and snake-oil salesmen on stage are the real thing. At every event, at least one person in the room is absolutely certain it’s all fake, and that’s the spiritualist, some of whom make a lot of money from this sort of deception.
“And those spiritualists were and still are exploiting vulnerable people for money, using trickery, and that’s a lot more difficult to defend than playing tricks on willing spectators in the name of entertainment,” says Van Herwegen.
“People like Josmah were against that sort of exploitation, in the same way Canadian magician James Randi still is today,” he explains. “Derren Brown is another example. He provides entertainment, and I saw him live and it was fantastic, but he’s also making it clear that what you see is not real, and his tricks are no different from the tricks used by those who pretend it is real.”
Then and now
The exhibition contains a large number of magicians’ props, many of which haven’t changed one bit since the turn of the 20th century. Stage magicians are not much different today than Klingsor or Meester Brando, two other important Flemish magicians, were back then, though Brando could still smoke on stage. With the exception of the crazy escapology of Joe Alcatraz, the tricks are exactly what you might see on Britain’s Got Talent. It’s as if time has stood still.
Van Herwegen says you can sometimes see new things at a competition, but that that doesn’t happen very often. “There is a limited number of tricks, but an unlimited number of ways of putting it across,” he says. “We don’t invent new tricks, we reinvent old ones. What makes a good magician win a first prize is presentation.”
He sees similarities with how cover bands work. “All cover bands play the same songs, but the way they do it is endlessly different. Making magic is like making music. In music you only have 12 notes, but you can put them in a different order, at a different tempo and you have another song. There are a lot of different sequences you can combine and use, and it’s that combination that makes a song or a trick unique.”
Lost names
Does nothing surprise Van Herwegen anymore? “I don’t think I’ve been surprised very often since I was 16. And if that happens, I don’t want to know the secret. I love the idea of being fooled again, and I miss that childlike sense of wonder. The great thing about magic is that you can make adults children again by just showing a simple trick.”
I love the idea of being fooled again, and I miss that childlike sense of wonder
Chapeau, the book, is based on information gathered from hundreds of sources, old magicians and their families, the collections of working magicians and enthusiasts up and down the country. When the exhibition opened on 13 June, Van Herwegen and the other organisers invited 250 magicians who had helped out in some way or another to attend the opening. The guests were all surprised by the amount of material in the exhibition.
“Everyone knew his own little bit, but nobody had ever seen it all together before. Everyone left that evening happy, feeling a little bit more proud of their art,” Van Herwegen explains. “Maybe it was the first time some of them had seen magic as an art, and not as a cheap form of entertainment.”
That is why the overriding objective for the accompanying book is to bring back all those lost names and forgotten careers on the biggest stages. “We wanted to give them eternal life in book form. We also decided to write for a broader public,” Van Herwegen says. “We could have made a very technical book with a lot of dates and names, but we wanted to let the public know that magic is more than just doing a trick, it’s also an art.”
Chapeau, de geheime goochelgeschiedenis van België is published by Manteau in Dutch
Until 16 November at Huis van Alijn, Kraainlei 65, Ghent
Photo: Kobe (left) and Christ Van Herwegen (right), courtesy Huis van Alijn
About the author
