✦ Golden Grolla Award 2010

David Blaine

The man who redefined street magic

In 1997 a young magician from Brooklyn changed the direction of modern magic with a single television special. "Street Magic" had no big stage, no assistants and no orchestra: just David Blaine, a deck of cards, real people on the street and a camera pointed at their faces. The world discovered that the strongest image in magic is not the trick, it is the reaction, and an entire generation of magicians grew up trying to capture that same raw astonishment.

Blaine then took his art somewhere no magician had gone, turning endurance itself into performance. He was buried alive for a week in New York, sealed in a block of ice in Times Square, he stood on a pillar for thirty-five hours, spent forty-four days suspended in a glass box over London and held his breath on live television beyond the limits considered possible. Each stunt was followed by millions of people and blurred the line between magic, sport and art.

One of the most influential magicians of our time, Blaine received the Golden Grolla from Masters of Magic in 2010, as the artist who gave magic back its danger and its truth.

Honoured by Masters of Magic among the legends who have shaped the history of magic.