Women Surrealists and Tarot
Tarot archetypes appear in the art of several women surrealists currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The closest to an actual tarot card is The Lady Magician by Sylvia Fein. The magician’s table is draped in a white cloth and scattered with perfume vials, shells, a framed picture, paint brushes standing in a glass vase, and a feather in a little glass bottle. I wonder if the card with the large border that’s tucked under the cloth is a Tarot card. Sylvia Fein was born in 1919 and calls herself a magical realist. Her website with examples of her work is at SylviaFeinPainter.com.
If the upright tarot tower is about destruction, is its opposite meaning construction? The Flutist by Remedios Varo turns tarot imagery on its head by levitating fossil-embedded stones and setting them in place using the power of the flute’s vibrations. This tower has eight sides to represent the musical octave, and the flutist’s face is inlayed with mother-of-pearl to signify enlightenment and the ability to co-create the universe. Varo modeled her tower on a planetarium built near Mexico City by the disciple of a Russian mystic. Read more
Tarot Heritage 