The Artistry of Tarot
The first tarot cards, from fifteenth-century Italy, were, essentially, playing cards. Known as carte de trionfi, 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, or “triumphs,” which featured mystical imagery combined with scenes of daily Renaissance life. Few of these original tarot cards remain—the scant number that are left are part of what are known as the Visconti-Sforza decks, none of which are complete—and they had more to do with passing the time than telling one’s fortune. It was not until the eighteenth century that people began to use the cards for occult readings.
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—there’s cat tarot, “Peanuts” tarot, pasta tarot, and even “Tarot del Toro,” inspired by Guillermo del Toro films. The evolution of the cards over generations forms the basis of “Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions,” 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—twenty-two cards representing significant aspects of life—in wild and wacky ways.—Rachel Syme
About Town
In Victoria Lynne Barclay’s startlingly intimate play “Camping,” 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. “Camping” is part of a modern wave of smart art about the humiliations and passions of girlhood, from “John Proctor Is the Villain” to the TV series “PEN15”; it shares some DNA with “Heated Rivalry,” 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.—Emily Nussbaum (HERE; through July 11.)
In 1896, a formerly enslaved hotel waiter named William Dorsey Swann was convicted in Washington, D.C., for “keeping a disorderly house.” 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—a 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’s legacy with a sing-through of Tamar-kali’s vocal chamber work “The Swann,” a meditation on identity, external judgment, and self-celebration.—Jane Bua (National Sawdust; July 10.)
Few artists have been more of a load-bearer for a scene—in this case, the reggae revival of the twenty-tens—than Original Koffee, 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, “Rapture,” she was the first woman to win the Grammy for best reggae album, and her début LP, “Gifted,” from 2022, placed her at the forefront of a sonic evolution that exploded distinctions of “old” and “new” in reggae music. She is a carrier of the movement’s legacy, but her voice refuses to be confined by its history.—Sheldon Pearce (Paradise Coney Island; July 11.)
The Netflix dramedy “The Four Seasons,” 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—and enmeshed enough that when the third couple, Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), split up, the remaining pairs spin out. “The Four Seasons,” now in its second season—which benefits tremendously from having shaken off the source material—is in many respects an overly tidy, milquetoast entertainment, but Fey’s treatment of relationships in midlife feels refreshingly rooted in reality.—Inkoo Kang (Now streaming.)
Deborah Bell runs a small, eccentric photo gallery in Chelsea. Her speciality is vintage material, but that never limits her range. Bell’s current show, “Abstract Visions & Uncommon Portraits,” 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’s face over the façades of old buildings, like memories that refuse to fade. László 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’s 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.—Vince Aletti (Deborah Bell; through July 2.)
In “The Death of Robin Hood,” 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 Skarsgård), 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’s monastic retreat comes off as a superficial, sentimental slog.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)
Pick Three
In Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” he presents aliens as saviors. Richard Brody shares some of the wider and wilder alien movies available to stream.
1. The Cold War gave rise to paranoid visions of space invasions, as in the low-budget, high-anxiety thriller “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” from 1956. The creatures’ 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.
2. John Sayles’s poignant and rowdy 1984 satire, “The Brother from Another Planet,” stars Joe Morton as an extraterrestrial who has taken the form of a Black man and then makes his way to Harlem. The visitor—who understands English but can’t speak—gradually 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.
3. Bruno Dumont’s three-hour-plus comedy “Coincoin and the Extra-Humans,” from 2018, is a sequel to his 2014 drama, “Li’l Quinquin,” but doesn’t depend on it. The action, set on France’s 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—including 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.S. Good stuff on the internet: