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ABSTRACT:
We are currently witnessing an enormous interest in psi phenomena as cultural and experiential events, displayed in landmark exhibits throughout the world and discussed from historical and other perspectives. This essay focuses on the various connections between art and psi. We mention how many forbears of parapsychology were artists or had a serious interest in the arts, and discuss how ostensible psi phenomena have been central to artistic works of great import and influence. After reviewing controlled psi research with artists and radical proposals of a form of "psychic art," we describe ostensible psi phenomena in the life and works of such seminal artists as Ted Hughes and Susan Hiller, among others. Both personal accounts and research support a strong connection between artistic and psi phenomena; we discuss various reasons why this may be so.
Keywords: art, literature, psi, parapsychology, Ted Hughes, Susan Hiller
We are experiencing a veritable explosion of interest in psi phenomena, not just from an evidential viewpoint, but as cultural and experiential events to be discussed from historical, artistic, and other perspectives (see also the two reviews by the first author in this issue of the journal) . In this essay we concentrate on the relationship between the arts and psi, mostíy leaving aside the vast and complex area of automaticity in creative endeavors, although some instances such as the case of Fredric L. Thompson, who suddenly started drawing sketches similar to those of a dead artist, straddle both realms (cf. Gauld, 1982).
One of the links between the arts and psi has been the depiction of ostensible parapsychological events as artistic materials. In the last few years there have been many exhibits on this theme, including The Edge of Reason in Norway and Blur of the Otherwordly in the USA, and the works by Kathleen Rogers, Susan Mac William (2011), and other artists, including reputed interviews of dead artists through mediums (see http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/log/archive/14/artafterdeath/). Noteworthy was the exhibition The Perfect Medium in the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which displayed photographs of mediumship séances and purported ghostly phenomena, most of them evidenüy fraudulent (e.g., of ghostly faces or faeries cut out from magazines, see also Jolly, 2006), but also some arguably paranormal ones. Foremost among the...