As the novelist Joseph Conrad said: “All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar, and surprising.” Whether that refers to the artwork’s source of inspiration, its connotations or its medium, art and magic are often connected in one way or another. Here are five artworks inspired by magic.
Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest (1907)
Starting off our list of artworks inspired by magic is Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest – a series representing four different phases of life: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. Created long before abstract painting took hold in mainstream art, these massive, colour-rich canvases were inspired not by theory, but by direct spiritual communication. Af Klint claims she was inspired to create the artworks after her spiritual guides, known as “The High Masters”, instructed her to do so.
With their mysterious forms, symbols and vibrant colours, these paintings are seen as gateways to other dimensions and images of life beyond everything. The artworks were not shown until 20 years after their creation, along with most of Klint’s other artworks and notebooks, as she believed the world was not ready to take part in and understand the spiritual messages in her work.
Leonora Carrington’s The Lovers (1987)
Next in our survey of artworks inspired by magic is The Lovers from the British surrealist Leonara Carrington. Carrington’s mythopoetic universe in her artwork is filled with chimeras, witches, ancient rites and surreal landscapes, all drawn from a lifelong engagement with alchemy, Celtic mythology and occultism. “You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment,” she once said in her novel, The Hearing Trumpet.
The Lovers invites multiple interpretations, drawing on themes of mystical union, alchemy and the occult. Its central red and blue figures may symbolise a merging of opposites, while the surrounding cloaked beings and fantastical creatures reflect Carrington’s esoteric influences. The painting can be seen as a vision of love as a transformative, even perilous, force, or as an inner alchemical journey of the self.
Marina Abramović’s Spirit Cooking (1996)
Abramović is known for pushing boundaries in her work, and Spirit Cooking is no exception. First created as part of a limited-edition book and performance piece, Spirit Cooking included ritualistic writings and recipes in pig’s blood on the walls of a gallery in Italy. The work later evolved into installations and live performances and became part of her broader body of work exploring ritual, pain and endurance.
In Spirit Cooking, the recipes are not literal but instead intended as “spiritual exercises” or inner confrontations. It aims to explore “the limits of consciousness” and transformative process of selfhood. Across Abramović’s work, performance is framed as modern-day ritual, rooted in Eastern European folk traditions, Tibetan Buddhism and occult archetypes.
Yves Klein’s Anthropometries (1960)
Following on in our list of art inspired by magic, Yves Klein’s performance piece Anthropometries uses naked women as ‘human paintbrushes’ to make imprints of their bodies in his patented pigment ‘Internationational Klein Blue’. By including others, Klein deliberately distanced himself from the a piece, and this later became the cornerstone of his conceptual artwork. He was also influenced by Rosicrucian mysticism and the concept of immateriality.
Klein’s inspiration for Anthropometries was partly drawn from his judo practice, where he became fascinated by the marks left on the mat after a fall. To him, the torso and thighs of the female body represented the purest and most intense form of life force possible, serving as an anthropometric symbol of ideal human proportion. He believed these bodily imprints conveyed the essential vitality that gives rise to human life, and that their presence in the work goes beyond individual identity or physical presence.
Paul Laffoley’s Thanaton III (1989)
Finishing off our list of artworks inspired by magic is Thanaton III from Paul Laffoley. Thanaton III is part map, part mandala and part science-fiction prophecy, a heavily labelled diagram exploring death, transformation and metaphysical architecture. It imagines a way for technology and spirituality to connect, allowing the mind to exist beyond the body. The viewer is invited to touch the painting’s handpads to pitch their consciousness into a kite allowing for astral travel.
Laffoley explained that his paintings were meant to be enacted within the “theatre of the mind”. Through a combination of cosmic architecture, Kabbalah and technology, Laffoley referred to his work as magical architecture, insisting that paintings were tools for psychic transformation.