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Posts from the ‘Tarot Decks’ Category

Mar 17

Francesco Clemente’s Tarot

You know Tarot has made it in the mainstream art world when a contemporary deck is given its own exhibit at the venerable Uffizi Museum.

Art News magazine just gave the deck a one-page spread in its March 2012 issue to announce the book, Francesco Clemente: The Tarots, published by Hirmer and available on Amazon for $33.00.

Clemente is an Italian artist based in New York City who studied tarot history and learned to read the cards before creating his deck. He’s quoted in the New Yorker as saying “I never imagined how similar the activities of reading the tarots and painting a picture are. In both cases, there is the effort to be completely present, and at the same time, to remove completely oneself from the picture.” Read more

Jan 3

4 Comments

Echoes of the Visconti-Sforza Deck at the Getty

Whenever I go to a museum, I make a point of searching the medieval exhibits for International Gothic art that resonates with the Visconti-Sforza deck. A recent chilly (by Los Angeles standards) Sunday at the Getty Center yielded three finds in one room.

The artist Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1427), the epitome of Italian International Gothic, flourished at the time Tarot was invented and just before Italian aristocracy began commissioning their elaborate hand painted decks. Aristocrats wanted to see an idealized version of themselves and their elegant world reflected in their art. Rich colors, glittering surfaces and intricate patterns were hallmarks of the International Gothic period, when artists reproduced in paint the feel of velvet brocade and the look of clothing intricately embroidered with gold thread. Read more

Oct 26

5 Comments

The Soprafino Deck of Carlo Dellarocca

A new Tarot deck style was born in 1835 when the Milanese printer Ferdinand Gumppenberg commissioned a deck from the artist/engraver Carlo Dellarocca. As the most elegant and refined Italian deck of its time, it quickly became known as i tarocchi sopraffini, the super-fine tarot. Many of its unique design elements were adopted by 19th century card printers. In the 1990s it experienced a revival when two publishers reprinted Dellarocca-inspired decks. Read more

Sep 15

Tarot Artist Niki de Saint Phalle

French-American Artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) is having a retrospective this month at the Nohra Haime Gallery in New York City. So, this seems like a good time to talk about her iconic Tarot Garden, an installation of twenty-two monumental sculptures depicting the major arcana. Read more

Sep 8

2 Comments

The Worst-Ever Booklet for a Tarot de Marseilles

The other day, I was looking at a 19th century Tarot de Marseilles, the 1JJ, that was published in Switzerland with an accompanying booklet written in French. The booklet has a Rider Waite Smith image on the cover! What were they thinking? Read more

Aug 11

10 Comments

Selecting an Historic Deck for Readings

Do you want to start reading with the Tarot de Marseilles (TdM) or some other historic deck, but you aren’t sure how to pick the right one for you? In the Cartomancy section I gave a run-down of decks by category and style, but I didn’t talk much about the actual selection process. Here’s how I go about evaluating a deck as a possible reading companion. Read more

Aug 5

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Il Castello dei Tarocchi

An absolutely gorgeous book arrived in my mailbox the other day from Italy – Il Castello dei Tarocchi, a collection of nineteen essays by an international roster of tarot authors. Many of the contributors are familiar to those of us who lurk around the tarot history forums: Lothar Teikemeier, Alain Bougearel, Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis, and many others. Read more

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