I have considered using playing cards to apply into my artworks as a metaphor of rich and poor; King&Queen cards as a metaphor of higher social class, the rest lower numbered cards as a metaphor of middle class and lower class in social class devision.
Before doing it, I had to read and get to know about the cards.
Playing Cards
A complete set of cards is called a pack (UK English), deck (US English), or set(Universal), and the subset of cards held at one time by a player during a game is commonly called a hand. A pack of cards may be used for playing a variety of card games, with varying elements of skill and chance, some of which are played for money. Playing cards are also used for illusions, cardistry, building card structures, cartomancy and memory sport.
Playing cards were invented in Imperial China. They were found in China as early as the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). By the 11th century, playing cards were spread throughout the Asian continent and later came into Egypt and Europe.
Playing cards first entered Europe in the early 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits (sets of cards with matching designs) very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks or pentacles), and which are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese decks.
In the late 14th century, the use of playing cards spread rapidly throughout Europe. Documents mentioning cards date from 1371 in Spain, 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many locations including Florence and Paris.
The four suits now used in most of the world — spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs — originated in France in about 1480.
The King
is a playing card with a picture of a king on it. The usual rank of a king is as if it were a 13 (or 14); that is, above the queen. In some games, the king is the highest-ranked card; in others, the ace is higher. In pinochle, schnapsen, and many other European games, both the ace and the 10 rank higher than the king.
The king of hearts is sometimes called the "suicide king" because he appears to be sticking his sword into his head. However, it is debated whether or not the sword and hand holding it actually belong to the king, due to a different design pattern that could indicate someone else stabbed him. The king of hearts is the only one of the kings without a mustache, whereas the king of diamonds is the only king not depicted carrying a sword, wielding an axe instead giving him the card playing nickname "the man with the axe." Additionally, the king of spades is the only king looking to the right, and the king of clubs is the only one with his weapon's tip on the ground.
In many card games, when all four kings are acquired by a single player, they are commonly called "the four horsemen".
A Jack
also Knave, is a playing card which, in traditional American and English decks, pictures a man in the traditional or historic aristocratic dress generally associated with Europe of the 16th or 17th century. The usual rank of a Jack, within its suit, plays as if it were an 11 (that is, between the 10 and the Queen). As the lowest face (or "court") card, the Jack often represents a minimum standard — for example, many poker games require a minimum hand of a pair of Jacks ("Jacks or better") in order to continue play.
As early as the mid-16th century the card was known in England as the Knave (meaning a male servant of royalty). Although "Jack" was in common usage to designate the "Knave," the term became more entrenched when, in 1864, English cardmaker Samuel Hart published a deck using "J" instead of "Kn" to designate the lowest-ranking court card. The Knave card had been called a Jack as part of the terminology of the game All-Fours since the 17th century, but this usage was considered common or low class. However, because the card abbreviation for Knave was so close to that of the King ("Kn" versus "K"), the two were easily confused.
In early games the kings were always the highest card in their suit. However, as early as the late 14th century special significance began to be placed on the nominally lowest card, now called the Ace, so that it sometimes became the highest card and the Two, or Deuce, the lowest.
Historically, the ace had the lowest value and this still holds in many popular European games (in fact most European decks, including the French Tarot Nouveau, do not use the "A" index, instead keeping the numeral "1"). However, in most games popular in the English-speaking world, aces have the highest value of all cards in a suit. Many games, such as poker and blackjack, allow the player to choose whether the ace is used as a high or low card.
The United States introduced the joker into the deck. The stylings of the joker and its function are almost identical to the Fool from the original French Tarot deck, which had been removed in the transformation to the standard 52-card French pack.
The Joker came to be represented as a clown or court jester by the 1880s, due to its assumed name and also probably borrowing from The Fool in tarot cards (predecessors to the French Tarot Nouveau, which depict The Fool as a lute-playing jester, were becoming popular in Europe around the same time).
Besides the choice of applying playing cards as a component of the contents of my artwork, I have also considered a few other materials to involve into the project. Such as food wrap, mask, dead flowers, jewelries and etc.
The reason I want to apply food wrap into the project as a component is because the food wrap is used to contain food freshness and prevent food getting spoiled or "corrupted" as if the objects or subjects indicate the meaning of corruption, decay and rots with the hope of saving and conserving to be sustainable.
For example, I wrap the king, queen and jack playing cards to denote a meaning that the upper class such as government being corrupted and apparently they intend to conserve the sustainability of their reputations but still wealthy.
The reason why I apply masks into the project is because a mask disguises a person and it represents dishonesty when corrupted people intend to hide the real side of themselves, the mask indicates hypocrites in my project.
Reference
- a b Wilkinson, W.H. (1895). "Chinese Origin of Playing Cards". American Anthropologist VIII (1): 61–78. doi:10.1525/aa.1895.8.1.02a00070.
- ^ a b c Needham 2004, p. 132
- ^ a b c Lo (2000), p. 390.
- ^ Needham 2004, pp. 131–132
- ^ Needham 2004, p. 328 "it is also now rather well-established that dominoes and playing-cards were originally Chinese developments from dice."
- ^ Needham 2004, p. 334 "Numbered dice, anciently widespread, were on a related line of development which gave rise to dominoes and playing-cards (+9th-century China)."
- a b c Needham, Joseph and Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin. (1985). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 1, Paper and Printing. Cambridge University Press., reprinted Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.(1986)
- Donald Laycock in Skeptical—a Handbook of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, ed Donald Laycock, David Vernon, Colin Groves, Simon Brown, Imagecraft, Canberra, 1989, ISBN 0-7316-5794-2, p. 67
- Trionfi - Tarot and its history
- ^ Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society, p. 290, Rodney P. Carlisle - Sage Publications INC 2009 ISBN 1-4129-6670-1
- "A Brief History of Playing Cards". US Playing Card Co. Archived from the original on 2007-08-26.
- "International Playing Card Society - The Bourgeois Tarot". I-p-c-s.org. 2010-09-09. Retrieved 2012-03-31.
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