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In the last issue of The Playing Card there was a short mention of "Museo dei Tarocchi" near Bologna.
The museum, a private enterprise, initiated and cared for by Morena Poltronieri and Ernesto Fazioli,
is housed in a restored 17th century building. Besides attempting to build up a comprehensive
collection (not an easy task these days, unless money is no problem) and present it to visitors
in various ways, the museum aims at various activities including guided visits and the publishing
of limited editions of major arcana decks. Lately they have added mail art projects to their
activities. Californian collage artist, Arnell Ando recently curated a project called
"
Literatarot
"
for the museum. 22 U.S. tarot artists were invited to contribute a defined tarot major with relevance
to a book of their own choice. The project has now ended and the 22 cards will be published in the
near future. A similar project for artists outside the USA is currently run by the museum itself.
I signed up for this project and my contribution will be the a Chariot with reference to Jack
Kerouac's novel "On the Road". Additionally, I have recently been involved with a mailart project
for the museum, the assignment being to create a Christmas post card based upon a tarot major card.
The invitations for "Tarot Christmas Tree Trumps" were sent to a number of my former mail art
contacts, partly by letter through the official postal system, and partly by email. About 50 in
each group. In the end I received 47 contributions by 28 different artists from 9 different
countries. Despite the relatively small number of contributions, a variety of media was used:
digital art, handmade collages, pen and ink drawings, hand colored drawings, even rubber stamping
and embroidery. The exhibition took place in Bologna from mid-December 2007 to mid-January 2008.
The museum printed 30 of the contributions as post cards. You can see a documentation of the project
here.
Tarot del Respiro
One deck published by the above named museum in a limited and signed edition of 500 decks is
"Tarot del Respiro", a collage deck created by Giovanni Monti in a strange and somewhat old-fashioned
surrealistic style. The artist effectively mixes roughly cut colored elements with black & white.
Curiously, about half of the cards depict more or less distorted animals. The 56x120
millimeter cards come in a cardboard box and are accompanied by a folder (in Italian) with a
few words about each card. Maybe the museum should consider to translate this paper into English?
Magic Italian Tarot
"Magic Italian Tarot" by Terro Lo is part of a different series of limited decks of 100 signed copies.
The cards are larger, 100x148 millimeters, printed on a heavy grained artists' cardboard, and using
a silk-screen-like technique, which adds a structured layer of printing ink to the surface. The
motives are various Italian tourist attractions, which are listed in an accompanying sheet.
"Strength" depicts, for example, the Coliseum in Rome, "The Lovers" render Juliette's house in Verona,
and "Death" gives a glimpse of a funeral procession on the Venice Laguna. The printing technique
used is very attractive, even though it is difficult to figure out exactly how it was done. My guess
is, that original photos were computerized by dissolving the images into coarse grains in various
sizes before separate printing screens were made for each of the colors used. A very nice pack indeed,
which comes in a cardboard cover adorned with a lacquer sigil.
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