{"id":689,"date":"2026-06-26T13:38:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=689"},"modified":"2026-06-26T13:38:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:38:38","slug":"the-artistry-of-tarot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=689","title":{"rendered":"The Artistry of Tarot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we\u2019re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The first tarot cards,<\/strong> from fifteenth-century Italy, were, essentially, playing cards. Known as carte de trionfi<\/em>, the cards formed the basis of a popular game played in Milanese courts: in addition to the fifty-two pip cards one might find in a standard set of playing cards, the tarot deck added twenty-one cards to the mix, the trionfi<\/em>, or \u201ctriumphs,\u201d which featured mystical imagery combined with scenes of daily Renaissance life. Few of these original tarot cards remain\u2014the scant number that are left are part of what are known as the Visconti-Sforza decks, none of which are complete\u2014and they had more to do with passing the time than telling one\u2019s fortune. It was not until the eighteenth century that people began to use the cards for occult readings.<\/p>\n

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In the years since, tarot has evolved into not only a New Age trend but a bustling form of artistic expression; beyond the classic Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909, you can now find a tarot deck customized for nearly every interest\u2014there\u2019s cat tarot, \u201cPeanuts\u201d tarot, pasta tarot, and even \u201cTarot del Toro,\u201d inspired by Guillermo del Toro films. The evolution of the cards over generations forms the basis of \u201cTarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions,\u201d<\/strong> a new, two-part exhibition running at the Morgan Library & Museum, through Oct. 4. The first section of the show displays rare early tarot decks, while the second highlights artists, such as the Surrealists Leonora Carrington and Niki de Saint Phalle, who have reinterpreted the Major Arcana\u2014twenty-two cards representing significant aspects of life\u2014in wild and wacky ways.\u2014Rachel Syme<\/em><\/p>\n

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About Town<\/h2>\n

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Off Broadway<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In Victoria Lynne Barclay\u2019s startlingly intimate play \u201cCamping,\u201d<\/strong> two trailer-park girls share a beat-up tent, every few years, over three decades, as their paths fork along class lines. They are best friends, secret-sharers; their battles feel brutal, world-shattering. \u201cCamping\u201d is part of a modern wave of smart art about the humiliations and passions of girlhood, from \u201cJohn Proctor Is the Villain\u201d to the TV series \u201cPEN15\u201d; it shares some DNA with \u201cHeated Rivalry,\u201d as well, in its exploration of buried desire. But the defiant two-hander, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt for Colt Coeur, has a distinctive, gritty force all its own, deepened by the committed performances of Alice Kremelberg and Colby Minifie, whose chemistry builds toward an inferno.\u2014Emily Nussbaum (HERE; through July 11.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Classical<\/div>\n

In 1896, a formerly enslaved hotel waiter named William Dorsey Swann was convicted in Washington, D.C., for \u201ckeeping a disorderly house.\u201d The disorder in question? Hosting drag balls. Swann is widely considered to be the first self-identifying drag queen in America, putting on revelrous evenings complete with gowns, booze, and queer joy\u2014a bright act of expression amid the mud of nineteenth-century society. Swann bravely sought a pardon for his charge, and, though denied, his efforts solidified him as a pioneer of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ resistance. National Sawdust spotlights Swann\u2019s legacy with a sing-through of Tamar-kali\u2019s vocal chamber work \u201cThe Swann,\u201d<\/strong> a meditation on identity, external judgment, and self-celebration.\u2014Jane Bua (National Sawdust; July 10.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Reggae<\/div>\n

Few artists have been more of a load-bearer for a scene\u2014in this case, the reggae revival of the twenty-tens\u2014than Original Koffee<\/strong>, previously just Koffee. She seems to perfectly synthesize the music of Jamrock with sounds of the broader Black diaspora. Support from the legendary Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt launched her into a transformational run for the genre. For her fluid, rule-challenging 2019 EP, \u201cRapture,\u201d she was the first woman to win the Grammy for best reggae album, and her d\u00e9but LP, \u201cGifted,\u201d from 2022, placed her at the forefront of a sonic evolution that exploded distinctions of \u201cold\u201d and \u201cnew\u201d in reggae music. She is a carrier of the movement\u2019s legacy, but her voice refuses to be confined by its history.\u2014Sheldon Pearce (Paradise Coney Island; July 11.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Television<\/div>\n

The Netflix dramedy \u201cThe Four Seasons,\u201d<\/strong> co-created by Tina Fey, is a remake of a 1981 film by Alan Alda. Like the film, the series follows a trio of well-heeled couples, including the high-strung Kate (Fey) and her soft-hearted husband, Jack (Will Forte), and the more sexually adventurous Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), who are all close enough to travel together every few months\u2014and enmeshed enough that when the third couple, Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), split up, the remaining pairs spin out. \u201cThe Four Seasons,\u201d now in its second season\u2014which benefits tremendously from having shaken off the source material\u2014is in many respects an overly tidy, milquetoast entertainment, but Fey\u2019s treatment of relationships in midlife feels refreshingly rooted in reality.\u2014Inkoo Kang (Now streaming.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Art<\/div>\n

Deborah Bell runs a small, eccentric photo gallery in Chelsea. Her speciality is vintage material, but that never limits her range. Bell\u2019s current show, \u201cAbstract Visions & Uncommon Portraits,\u201d<\/strong> is a miscellany that includes portraiture (August Sander, Clarence John Laughlin) but focusses on discoveries in avant-garde still-life and abstraction. Edmund Teske slips between genres with two small, dreamy images that layer a woman\u2019s face over the fa\u00e7ades of old buildings, like memories that refuse to fade. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy hovers low over a gaggle of pigeons, suspending the viewer uneasily between protector and predator. In a room full of little mysteries, Rose Mandel\u2019s stand out. Her study of tangled foliage is classic modernism, but her two seascapes, seen through luminescent bubbles, are visionary in the vein of Hilma af Klint.\u2014Vince Aletti (Deborah Bell; through July 2.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Movies<\/div>\n

In \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood,\u201d<\/strong> starring Hugh Jackman, the writer and director Michael Sarnoski presents the legendary hero as a thirteenth-century serial killer who, with his crude companion Little John (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd), leaves a bloody trail of poor people in the English countryside. Badly wounded in a battle of revenge, Robin Hood is brought to a priory and tended by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), whose generosity awakens his finer feelings and spurs him to virtuous, self-sacrificing action. But neither part of the drama comes alive; the early scenes, in which Robin Hood bathes in gore, are a hollow churn, and the redemptive warmth of the protagonist\u2019s monastic retreat comes off as a superficial, sentimental slog.\u2014Richard Brody (In wide release.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pick Three<\/h2>\n

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In Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cDisclosure Day,\u201d he presents aliens as saviors. Richard Brody shares some of the wider and wilder alien movies available to stream.<\/em><\/p>\n

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1.<\/strong> The Cold War gave rise to paranoid visions of space invasions, as in the low-budget, high-anxiety thriller \u201cEarth vs. the Flying Saucers,\u201d<\/strong> from 1956. The creatures\u2019 arrival is marked by violence; their weaponry, brought to life with stark special effects, heralds an intergalactic war of conquest and sparks an arms race; and a destructive showdown in Washington, D.C., is heavily symbolic and inescapably political.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> John Sayles\u2019s poignant and rowdy 1984 satire, \u201cThe Brother from Another Planet,\u201d<\/strong> stars Joe Morton as an extraterrestrial who has taken the form of a Black man and then makes his way to Harlem. The visitor\u2014who understands English but can\u2019t speak\u2014gradually learns to fit in while deploying his few but startling paranormal abilities. He also reveals that he was enslaved in space, leading to bitterly ironic results.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Bruno Dumont\u2019s three-hour-plus comedy \u201cCoincoin and the Extra-Humans,\u201d<\/strong> from 2018, is a sequel to his 2014 drama, \u201cLi\u2019l Quinquin,\u201d but doesn\u2019t depend on it. The action, set on France\u2019s rugged northern coast, is anchored by teen romance, involves far-right anti-migrant activists, and is complicated by blue goo from space that creates clones\u2014including of the two loopy police officers who investigate. The spectacularly antic tale of originals and doubles, locals and outsiders, visually and philosophically lampoons the very concept of identity.<\/p>\n

Read more Colson Whitehead\u2019s Big Score<\/a><\/p>\n

P.S. Good stuff on the internet:<\/strong><\/p>\n