Press materials · the artwork
The Houdini Paintings
Acrylic on canvas by Dean Carnegie, Nashville magician and magic historian. High resolution files are available on request for editorial use.
Published work. Dean Carnegie's magic artwork has appeared on the cover of Elan Magazine in Virginia, and twice on the cover of MAGIC Magazine.
The Houdini series
Houdini in Chains
The largest canvas of the series. Houdini set against a pale disc, wrists locked in front of him.
Red Profile
A hard graphic profile, the chain running from the collar to a brass padlock hanging clear of the head.
Yellow Portrait
Houdini in a top hat and evening dress against a worked yellow ground.
Stained Glass Profile
A young Houdini in profile, the ground broken into leaded colour behind him.
Split Portrait
A flat, geometric head divided down the centre line, blues against grey.
Green Portrait
The same divided treatment on a deep green ground, the halves set at odds with each other.
Why now
The centennial of Harry Houdini's death begins on October 31, 2026 and runs a full year, to October 31, 2027. Any issue inside that window carries the same peg.
The Nashville thread
He came here twice
Houdini played the Grand Opera House in 1899 as a young performer selling wonder. He returned to the Ryman on March 11, 1924 with Houdini on Spooks, and told the city that mediums were frauds. The same man sold the mystery and then spent his last years demolishing it. Nashville saw both halves.
A pair of his handcuffs
Dean Carnegie owns a pair of Houdini's handcuffs. They can be photographed, and they can appear alongside the paintings.
Other magicians
Dean Carnegie paints magicians almost exclusively, all of it in acrylic. Houdini is the largest body of work, but not the only one.
Alexander Herrmann
Harry Kellar
Dante
Lance Burton
Penn & Teller
The painter
Dean Carnegie is a Nashville theatrical illusionist and magic historian who writes as The Magic Detective.
He hosted the French television documentary on Houdini for Arte, has written more than seven hundred articles on magic history since 2011, hosts The Magic Detective Podcast, and is finishing a book on how Houdini manufactured his own legend. He has presented Houdini programs for Atlas Obscura in Washington, D.C. Thirty years as a full time performer, more than eight thousand shows, three U.S. Presidents and a TEDx stage.