Why Artists Keep Turning to Tarot

0:00In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Dear honeys, this is goodbye. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist wherever you get your podcasts.

0:31it fits almost like a perfect puzzle piece as something that surrealists would be interested in who were very interested in things like the subconscious mind dreams and through that avenue of exploration you end up with people like you say andre breton max ernst as well as remedio Sparrow.

0:52I'm Margaret Kerrigan, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast by Artnet News.

1:06Artists and creatives have been fascinated with tarot for over 600 years. Recently, that fascination has resurfaced in a big way, and it's showing up everywhere from museum walls to fashion runways. It's not entirely surprising. As a sweeping universal narrative language small enough to fit in your pocket, tarot's archetypal imagery is built for rediscovery and reinterpretation. Once a medieval royal court game, tarot drifted into the realms of the occult, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. But in the 21st century, it's entered the pop culture zeitgeist. It's now accessible, affordable, and can offer you insight into the past, present, and future, but most importantly, yourself.

1:46Artists have long mined the cards for spiritual and creative inspiration and have contributed to the card's enduring relevance. Pamela Coleman-Smith designed the deck that's still the industry standard back in 1909, though her name was buried for decades under the man who commissioned it. Artists like Leonora Carrington painted a hauntingly surreal major arcana in 1955, and Salvador Dali spent decades on his own gilded cinematic deck, finishing it in the early 1970s after an abandoned James Bond commission first got him hooked on it. Now dozens of artists and designers are dabbling with the potent imagery that combines everything from art history, numerology, astrology, psychology, and other just pure artistic forms like color and gesture.

2:29And that's the real magic of tarot. It's an art form that is built around the plurality of meaning and the staying power of images. A show at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York explores tarot in depth, and my colleague Annika Olson, ArtNut's Galleries editor, recently covered the exhibition. She's here with me to talk tarot in all its many forms. Hi, Annika. Thanks for joining me on The Art Angle. Thanks for having me, Maggie. This show at the Morgan has really got a lot of people talking, and I think it's really kind of hit this moment of, like, tarot really growing in this cultural imaginary right now.

3:04But maybe we should just start really quickly with what the tarot is for people that might be unfamiliar. So in some, the tarot is just a deck of 78 illustrated cards, and those are split into the major arcana, which is 22 cards representing kind of like archetypal life themes like death and the tower, the wheel of fortune, the fool, the hangman, all of these kind of personalities that kind of have like a greater significance for, you know, almost like fatalistic impact. And then there's the minor arcana, which is 56 cards that I think will be really recognizable to a lot of people because those are divided into four suits, just really similar to the standard playing deck that we know and love today.

3:45And those include pentacles, wands, swords, and cups. And all of those suits have like a specific kind of affiliation as well. I think what's really interesting about the Morgan exhibition is that it really dives into like the origins of tarot. So maybe, Annika, could you tell me a little bit about what you learned and saw when you were at the show? What's really interesting about playing cards is today they're very everyday. You think of them sort of having been around since forever, but in the early part of the 14th century, these were new inventions. There's evidence of cards that had been in China, in Persia, and particularly Egypt.

4:23but we don't really see playing cards or what we would identify as playing cards in Europe until the 1300s. They first appeared in Spain. There's some decks that were found in Bern. And one of the oldest and most complete decks, particularly of the tarot cards, is one of the crown jewels of the Morgan Library's collection. And it's the Visconti's Forza tarot deck. J.P. Morgan himself purchased this in 1911. It was produced around the 1450s. From this era, from the 14th century, there's only evidence of about 15 decks. Some of these decks are only comprised of one card that continues to exist. The Visconti's Forza deck in particular is so remarkable because 74 of the 78 cards still remain.

5:09That's incredible. Yeah, it's very incredible. And the Morgan has the majority of them, and then the rest are in an institution in Italy. So the show at the Morgan was really spectacular because it reunited all of these cards from this deck for the first time in North America. That's really interesting. I mean, what did the show kind of reveal about why they were created and who were they being used by? So these were still very much something of the courts, of royal households, of the affluent people. These weren't everyday common people objects. And these cards are really significant, particularly from an art historical standpoint, because these were made by the same artist studios and artist workshops who were at the time also making things that we would recognize as early Renaissance, fine art, panel paintings, illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces, and sculptures.

6:03So these courts and these courtiers had to sort of make whatever they wanted. So they came to know of these card things and wanted cards. So these cards, again, not like today where they might just be sort of throwaway pieces. Each one of these cards is just a miniature work of art with the same exacting standards that you would expect of any other type of cultural production of the time. And it's really interesting because despite obviously a playing cards very small, right, maybe a little bit bigger there, it sort of synthesizes Renaissance, especially Italian Renaissance, artistic ingenuity.

6:39Another thing that we take for granted today are things like cardstock that wasn't invented until centuries later. So these workshops had to figure out how do we make paper a little bit more durable, A, so that we can execute these minute illustrations, but also because people are using them, right? So there's records of a card getting torn or damaged. There's records of courtiers making a request for them to be replaced or updated or changed or one gets lost. And each one of these is like a very minute work of art. There's also like the invention of various varnishes just to like make sure that A, they're durable, but B, as beautiful as they can be.

7:19Yeah, I never really thought about the kind of like the technology that goes into making some of these cards. And I think that is such a great point because obviously the reason they've become so ubiquitous today is because we've become mass produced in this way. So it would have been such special objects back then. How exactly was the game played if they weren't being used for like divination in the same way? Like what was the game that these courtiers were playing? Yeah, so it was the game of triumph. Did not have any sort of mystical connection at the time. And I have to put in a little shout out here to Joshua O'Driscoll and Frank Trujillo of the Morgan, who sort of walked me through this.

7:59Because today, we obviously associate it with mystical readings and tapping into the unknown. But they really made a point that while courtiers there and of the time in that society were still very interested in things like astrology and seeing to the future, this was very much a game. and it sort of reflected the cultural norms of the time. So games, say like dice, were associated with bar rooms and drunkenness and chance, which could be associated with things very sinful. Whereas the game of triumph was associated more with games of skill and intellect. So it was in the realm of things like, say, chess.

8:40And particularly if you think of like women of the court who needed to maintain a certain type of reputation, this fit perfectly. It was something that they could do and play that didn't have any sort of negative connotations because it was something of the mind and suitable to their stature. As far as the exact rules of the game, they are spelled out. I don't know the nuances of the exact game, but it is similar to today where, like you were talking, the Arcana then would have been considered trump cards. Yeah, that makes sense. So when did this divination aspect actually enter the vocab around tarot and how did it kind of get reinterpreted in that way?

9:23We first start seeing it in the late 18th century in France. At that time, it's still very much still used as a card game, used for parlor games, sometimes tricks. But there is this sort of offshoot of French occultists who begin attributing to the cards sort of this pathway to ancient wisdom. They also attributed it to some sort of ancient Egyptian wisdom, which was sort of misplaced for the time. And that's when you start seeing two decks sort of splitting between them, one for gameplay and one for this sort of mystical divination aspect. This really reaches a fever pitch, though, in the late 19th century in Britain, particularly with the advent of what's called the Golden Dawn.

10:09It was this secret society in Britain that focused on occultism and magic, and they really were committed to exploring the mystical uses. That's where we got the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is like what everyone kind of knows as tarot today, right? Exactly. So there's two Golden Dawn members who are behind what is today known as the most famous illustrations of the tarot deck. And it was A.E. Waite, and he provided the instructions and sort of stratum that the cards were going to be in. And then there was Pamela Coleman-Smith, who created these now iconic illustrations. I think she's such an interesting figure.

10:47I mean, she could be the subject of her own podcast at this point. As I mentioned in the beginning, she was really left out of that whole history of the deck until really the last several decades. She was also just an incredible artist in her own right and an illustrator working at a time when, very gainfully, when women didn't have access to that kind of work, which I think is so interesting. So for those listening, if you want a whole rabbit hole to go down to, Google Pamela Coleman Smith. So the imagery that they used for the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, is it pretty close to what the original gameplay decks looked like, or did they kind of reinvent some of this for a more modern audience?

11:23So there's really strong parallels between the original decks and Pamela Coleman Smiths, as well as other artistic decks that were being created. However, you can definitely see where occultism took a front seat versus the decks that were made in Renaissance Italy. For instance, the suit of pentacles, the pentacles being a very well-recognized occult symbol. Previously, that was the suit of coins, which makes a little bit more sense. Also, wands were not original. Those were either batons or as in the Visconti's Forza deck, they were staves. So there's these sort of tweaks to the way that they approached them.

12:01I haven't seen the Morgan show, but I did see a really similar show in London last year called Tarot Origins and Afterlives at the Warburg Institute. And it kind of went also through that kind of evolution of just the imagery that was used. And I thought what was so interesting to me is that the Warburg Institute was founded by art historian A.B. Warburg. And I think he himself was really interested in just the images and how they kind of change shape over time from like an art historical perspective. And he dedicated himself to the study of how these archetypal images reappear across millennia in kind of very new guises.

12:37And he called this theory the survival of the antique. And he was trying to like chart the passage of what he called like survivor images and whatnot. So that's where he kind of like really got invested in the tarot. I think that just really speaks to kind of like how these images of the tarot have so much resonance despite changes in culture, changes in history, just changes in form. And that's something that The Morgan Show like seems like it really gets to as well. And I think as we move into the 20th century, we see more and more artists like very deliberately experimenting with this imagery as well, right?

13:11Was there a lot of that on view in the Morgan? Yeah, so the Morgan show is comprised of two separate shows, which was a really fun opportunity because the first half was dedicated to tarot in the Renaissance, its origins. And then the second half is really dedicated to the modern and contemporary use of it. Speaking to your point, it's really interesting when you look at tarot, the symbolism, the recognizable images. And this, I think, also speaks to Pamela Coleman Smith's genius. While there is an outline of what's included in these decks, the way that this is executed is truly endless. It seemingly knows no bounds.

13:52And it's a really rare example of an archetype that you see across the centuries that artists keep returning to and keeps mining for artistic invention. In other eras, especially of art history, we both studied art history. Like if we look at the Renaissance, we might compare different renditions of the Virgin or the Annunciation and things like that. But those sort of archetypes are usually bounded by a century or so. And this is something that just, it's got legs. Like, artists still keep returning to it time and time again. Yeah, I think we start really seeing this too. Like, the surrealists were very into tarot.

14:33And I've seen, like, a couple different interpretations of the tarot from that perspective. I was at the Saint-Opompidou show in Paris a couple years ago, that big surrealism show that they had. and they had André Breton's sketches for his tarot deck. And I just wonder, how much did you kind of get into this at the Morgan? What were they doing when they were reinterpreting this imagery? And what kind of did it lend their own artistic practice? I mean, when you think about the Surrealists and you think about tarot at that time, which at that point had already been almost entirely subsumed by occult thought and practices of divination and mysticism, it fits almost like a perfect puzzle piece as something that surrealists would be interested in, who were very interested in things like the subconscious mind, dreams.

15:19And through that avenue of exploration, you end up with people like you say, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, as well as Remedios Varro. They're all sort of experimenting and dabbling within, again, this stratum of the tarot imagery to try and find new ways, not just as a form of divination, but new ways to explore those surrealist themes that pervaded their entire practices. Yeah. And I think this is why so many artists, this is like my personal working theory, but like why so many artists return to something like tarot is that it's just like endlessly generative in that way is that there's so much history.

15:56There's so many different avenues to explore in it. There's so much like richness in the imagery as well. There's so many pieces from different times. It's kind of built into it. And I think what it gets at for the surrealist practice too, is like really understanding like the real genesis of creativity, like from the depths of your subconscious, like where you can mine these ideas from and how you can put them out into the world and still have them like resonate with other people. We should caveat this conversation by saying like we are talking about like tarot in the most like Western sense, like it's very Western centric decks that we're looking at and how it kind of embeds itself in your psyche and And how those figures and those kind of like totemic references become so important for creative expression in some capacity.

16:41Yeah, it seemingly, especially starting with the surrealist, is a very potent starting point. And I think that's what artists find so intriguing about it is because it's a place to start. But where you go and how you end up, it's really an open field of creativity and exploration. Again, with this like super rich history, but also undefined future. Well, I think there is actually an important caveat to this Surrealist discourse too, which is the Scottish painter Eithel Colhoun is a Surrealist painter, is kind of remembered in that way. There's a great show about her work just last year at Tate Britain, which is really like my formal introduction to her.

17:20But she was like invited, I think, to be part of the Surrealists. And she said no, because they essentially like didn't actually believe or want to be practicing magic. And she's like, no, I want to be practicing magic. That's what I'm here for, guys. But she kind of really pushed tarot beyond that iconographic moment. And I think, was it the first truly abstract deck that was made? Or I'm not sure. Do you remember offhand? Yeah, I believe it's the first and potentially only totally abstract deck. There's no figuration. Which really does change the purview of tarot, but I think it's at the kernel of truth in it, which is like really what can you take from it in your mind's eye, I guess.

18:05Yes. You can almost sense that even though she deviated from the surrealist roots there, she was sort of tapping into her own intuition to create these totally abstract cards. And the period that she made these in, in the 1970s, is sort of another wave after the surrealists of artists who become really interested in tarot. And this lines up with New Age thinking, Age of Aquarius, if you will. Aren't we in an age of Aquarius now? Didn't we re-enter one? I think we may have. We'll have to. Yeah, here we are. Here we are again. That would line up seeing as we're seeing a new proliferation of tarot again.

18:46You're so right. I mean, it's all in a full circle now. I'm going to keep an eye out for it all. So yeah, and then in the first New Age, though, we see like Betty Sayre, Bayonettles. Bayonettles makes the first photographic tarot deck, which I actually think is really surprising. It was the first of the time. I didn't know that. That's very cool.

19:23Maybe just as a reference, I actually have the Eiffel Kowun deck that I got at Tate Britain. I was actually going to ask you as a tarot reader what your experience is like working with a totally abstract tech. Does that influence the process? us? Well, that's such a great question. I think I should first start by caveating this and saying that like, yes, I'd read tarot, but I am a very amateur tarot reader. Like I don't do this professionally. I do this for fun. I do this as my own kind of like creative process, ways to like tapping into things that maybe I'm not accessing fully because, you know, you get trapped in your mind or being logical or things like that.

20:03Or if you have feelings you're trying to process, and you don't understand, which I think kind of speaks to where tarot is trending now in the popular imagination is like, it's not as divinatory anymore. It's more about self-reflection, like really unearthing your own feelings and emotions, understanding who you are, understanding where you fit in the world, like reflecting on decisions you want to make. For some people, it's lost some of that occult flavor, but for others, that occult flavor is strong. I could say I'm somewhere in between. Nice middle ground. Yeah, exactly. I would say as like a tarot reader, I have never actually been able to read Eiffel's tarot.

20:41But I do find them really, really beautiful. Let me find like a good one with lots of colors. So I don't know if you can see this. It's essentially just splotches of color that kind of run together. You can tell it was like some of the paint was wet when she was putting it on the canvas with like the underpainting was still wet and bleeding in. And it feels very like ambiguous and it's almost like a Warshak. How do you say that? Warshak. Warshak? Warshak. Warshak test. Yeah. And you can really see outside of tarot, like she's integrating things like which of the time would have been appropriate, abstract expressionism, color field painting.

21:21So it's sort of both the formal aspects of art making as well as formal aspects of tarot coming together in one piece. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's also interesting because I doubt you can see it on these cards I'm holding up, but this one is just blue and black and indigo swirls. Indigo is radiating from the center into this black mass with blue on the edges. it almost looks like moon phases in the middle but it's not that specific like it's just dots but you could potentially interpret it as yeah that might work in the divination you sort of like the yeah exactly but there's also notes she made all these notes about what these are for her so this one is called the princess of discs which is like not actually a figure in the tarot specifically, but you can see how it may be relate to the queen of pentacles or something like that, which would be the more traditional version.

22:22And then she has these notes at the bottom too. That's like the princess of the echoing hills, the rose of the palace of earth. I don't know what any of that means, but like, it's very like evocative terms. So I guess if you're reading the deck, there's like still other ways to access it besides just staring in the colors. But like, I guess you would be looking at how the colors affect you and what that telling you. And then there's like these annotations about how she's reading it personally and what these like colors feel like for her. I think that really speaks to the idea of tarot being truly a starting point, not necessarily a guide or roadmap.

22:58Because for this deck, obviously she started there and just carved her own path, her own interpretation, both conceptually and visually. Yeah, definitely. I think so many artists have done this throughout the 20th century too. I mean, one major one is obviously the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who made the whole tarot film. Like he practices tarot still in Paris and things like that. He's like the de facto like tarot, I don't know, like the go-to tarot guy right now in some ways. And then Nikki de Saint-Falls, she also was really into tarot in her lifetime. And she built an entire tarot garden in Italy.

23:35I don't know if you've been, Annika, this is like on my pilgrimage list. Yeah, it's been on my list for a while now. We should make it happen. Totally. She started working on it in the 1970s and she didn't complete it until like the late 1990s and opened it to the public. And you can still go there today. It's taking a lot of, I think, refurbishment over the last few years. Like not all of this stuff is the most durable, but the garden's made up of like 22 monumental sculptures, one for each card of the major arcana. And they're like built from concrete and steel and covered in this mirrored glass.

24:08And they're like these really like, you know, very curvaceous forms, which is very much in keeping with her artistic style as well. And then she built one. It was the Empress, which is like one of the big major arcana figures. Very appropriately, she built it. It's like a sphinx-like structure. And she lived in there for a long time while she was actually building the tarot gardens. It's like, has this very like personal aspect for her. Yeah. And one thing I have to say, too, back to the show at the Morgan, in the modern contemporary half of it, which was organized by Claire Gilman, in keeping with this ongoing momentum, this ongoing tradition among artists to take up the tarot as a starting point, they actually commissioned a new work by a British artist, Chris O 'Feely, who came up with his whole own new world of interpretation for tarot.

24:59and he incorporated a lot of the scenes, colors, and themes of carnival. And his deck really taps into the Trinidadian carnival mythology and iconography. And these works were so vibrant and at the same time stark. He used a lot of black and white contrasts, a lot of movement. You had made that caveat earlier that a lot of this is Western-focused. he really incorporates this new element and sort of makes it more in line with his cultural tradition. I love seeing how contemporary artists are continuing to like reinvent the tarot today. And I would say, I don't know, it might be just bias on my part because it's what I'm interested in.

25:42But I do think there's a lot of like, obviously, reinvention of these figures for specific identities. There's like a lot of like queering of the tarot. There are a lot of queer artists that are reinterpreting like, you know, the binary norms of like the lovers and card and stuff like that, which I think is great. There is an artist that I was introduced to at the Warburg show last year named Suzanne Triester. And she's like a pioneering digital artist. And she's been working with tarot iconography for decades at this point as part of her practice. And she makes like a very issues based deck. I think it's called like the Hexen Tarot.