| Abstract | Amidst the flourishing of Neo
-
Magnetism during Jean Martin Charcot's reign
at Salpêtrière and
Hippolyte Bernheim’s at the Hôpital de Nancy, French alienists, neurologists,
psychophysiologists, parapsychologists, occultists and Rosicrucians explored the potency of
imagistic suggestion and sensory activation alongside the vibrator
y power of magnetic
emanations to unleash the unconscious and generate creativity. In states that Pierre Janet called
“automatisme psychologique,” Jules Janet called “somnambulisme magnétique,” and Albert de
Rochas called “psychic theosophy,” the sensory s
ubjectivity of magnetized subjects was
considered so heightened that without any training, they could create art. So prevalent did these
explorations become that while mesmeric states were being induced by sensory bombardment
and images of hypnotic bodies
at the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the parapsychologists Rochas and
Émile Magnin were experimenting with ways in which their magnetized subjects, particularly
the artist models, Lina and Magdaleine G., were able to perform plays, operas and dance.
Regarded as
impossible to attain in “modern oppressive civilization,” the playwright with a PhD
in superconsciousness, Jules Bois, explained that these states could only be attained “by
hypnosis, by that artificial sleep that dips the soul into delicious oblivion and
brings back the
natural being, magnetic and rhythmically responsive.” By focusing upon the hypnotic bodies and
mesmeric performativity of Lina and Magdaleine G., as well as at the Salon de la Rose
-
Croix,
this paper will explore how and why they appeared as
an authentic attainment of what Bois
called “l'art inconscient.” |
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