Tag: Ciro Marchetti

Ciro Marchetti’s Tarot Decoratif

On By benebellIn deck review3 Comments

Wow. You want to talk about a handsome deck with high impact, let’s take a little walk-through of Ciro Marchetti’s Tarot Decoratif. The deck was first an exclusive special edition deck, but it’s now available via U.S. Games, and it’s worth your while to snag your own copy. This is just a quick walk-through of the cards.

In my photos you’ll see that the King of Cups snuck in front of The Fool. Marchetti’s deck piqued the Hubby’s interest and he took a look through the cards before I had a chance to see them, and so the cards got a little bit out of order.

You often hear from members of the tarot community how Ciro Marchetti decks seem to appeal more to men. So it’s funny to see it play out and fact-checked by the Hubby.

Premised on a theory that the early tarot features the Mysteries of the Cathars hidden in plain sight (intentionally ambiguous so as to avoid persecution by Roman Catholic authorities), this Marseille-inspired deck modernizes the pictorial stories of Christian Gnosticism in a magical realist style that combines color blocking iconic of TdM and the glamorous, ornamental, refined craftsmanship of Marchetti’s work.

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Ciro Marchetti’s Encore Tarot (& New Media Art vs. Old Visual Arts)

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, tarot, tarot community8 Comments

If there is one Ciro Marchetti deck to have, it’s the Encore Tarot. This is the deck that fully showcases Marchetti’s talent as an artist, the consistent clarity of his vision, and evinces the magnificence of tarot art, taking what had been possible traditionally to new modern heights.

When future tarot scholars look back at our era, the one deck artist’s name I am very sure will come up time and time again is Ciro Marchetti. His style is so distinct, so unique that it has indelibly trademarked itself in the collective consciousness. I can spot a Marchetti deck by the artwork before knowing he was the creator, just as I (and all of us) can spot a Marchetti wannabe.

I’ve always been a huge admirer of Marchetti’s talent, though admittedly, in my own past I’ve been known to be ambivalent about digital art decks or, more specifically, new media art. But then that’s been a long-raging cold war in the arts community anyway– new media art vs. the old visual arts (or “fine arts”).

Marchetti is the new media artist who changed my mind. New media art is defined as art created by using digital technology, forms of digital art and computer-generated graphics. Old visual fine arts would be drawing by hand, painting, sculpture, in essence what is “hand-crafted.” However, these definitions can get a bit dysfunctional, especially when you get into hand-drawing with a stylus digital pen on a computer pad vs. hand-drawing with a pencil on sketch paper.

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