View single post by Agonistes
 Posted: Sat Jun 20th, 2009 04:14 am
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Agonistes



Joined: Thu Jun 18th, 2009
Location: Oxford, Alabama USA
Posts: 22
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 tantricknite, i thought they might be early seventies, myself.  the book mentioned (which i found on amazon for ten bucks--yay!-- and ordered today) is dated 1971, so i'm thinking if it is the same artist, the LSD art career might have been somewhat short-lived, if the apocryphal tale i got along with the deck was anywhere near true, and he was a wanderer with a lot of money inherited at home.  it's a strange style to imagine coming from philly, to me; they look so much like louisiana lowcountry art; even the buildings depicted have kind of a ramshackle new orleans look to them.


a friend of mine who is well versed in tarot history along with various cult and pagan theology thinks it might be intended as a set of voodoo cards, drawn to represent the major arcana of course, but also extended to biblical and lore figures and concepts rather than suits.  she points out the liberal use of biblical language and icons in voodoo.

i believe by the fine quality of the lines that the art was reduced in size before printing...unless this fellow (or lady) used an extremely fine rapidograph pen, but some of the detail is so minute that i'm convinced it was reduced.

skad1, thank you for the links.  they were helpful, as well as interesting.

onepotato, i agree with the grenwich village style also, in composition, mainly.  the figures themselves are still very representative to me of southern folk art, but you'd have seen that more in paint than pen and ink, i think.  the pen style reminds me a lot of r. crumb's art of that era, as well.  thanks also for the suggestion of the book, for storage; i will look one up for sure.


thank you all for looking at these for me and helping me solve what they are and where they came from, as well.  i kind of appeared on this forum without introduction, but i was so excited to find a forum that i could talk to folks who actually could give me helpful advice, and share this cool art with.
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