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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Change your mind based on new information?” An enlightening new exhibition at Manhattan’s The Morgan Library & Museum returns the mystery to a phenomenon that commercialization demystified almost completely.
On the weekend of America’s 250th birthday, Serviette took cover from both an ongoing heat wave and a forthcoming thunderstorm by ducking into an experience considerably older (and, if we’re honest, more interesting) than anything happening elsewhere in the city that weekend (“JUSTT&TMARRIED!”).
Opening just weeks ago at The Morgan Library & Museum, Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions proves that everything decent in our culture draws from that most elusive well of taste. It was nothing short of startling to leave the premises that afternoon with a newfound appreciation for what has (evidently erroneously) become viewed as the tackiest of parlor tricks.
Today, tarot is often sold as either mystical self-care—packaged somewhere between bath salts and incense—or as a portal to the subconscious. It's all very Freudian, if you ask us. Yet its origins are neither mystical nor countercultural, but firmly rooted in the artistic culture of Renaissance Italy.
Tracing backwards in time to the 15th century, the first tarot decks were created in the workshop of a court artist called Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. Like many things flattened by the cogs of capitalism, tarot was originally conceived as a card game for the ruling class. Gilded and hand-painted, Bembo’s decks reflected the splendor and refinement of his patrons’ world. How then has such a storied folly ended up in the hands (or factories, as it were) of Toys ”R” Us?
Tarot’s striking imagery eventually captivated occultists and mystics—first in 18th- and 19th-century France, and later in early 20th-century Britain with the Occult Revival and the publication of the now-mass-replicated Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909. As the deck spread across the world, tarot was gradually transformed from an aristocratic pastime into a mass-market curiosity.
The Morgan Library exhibition explores the artistic evolution of many notable tarot decks across two eras: the first examines its Renaissance origins, and the second charts its radical commercial transformation in the 20th and 21st centuries. What is made abundantly clear is the dynamism of the tarot—once the preserve of Renaissance courts, and now endlessly adapted for the supermarket shopper. Like so many cultural artifacts before it, tarot survived by becoming popular—but popularity came at the expense of memory.
Strolling through the galleries, it became easier to draw parallels to the philosophy behind Serviette. Just as these historical symbols have been preserved, reinterpreted, and elevated across centuries, our everyday rituals—from the morning iced coffee to the dabbing of fine fragrance—deserve the same reverence for craft, heritage, and intention.