High School Studio Lesson
Caroline Long
Card playing is a popular pastime in many cultures, including games like bridge, gin rummy, and 52-pickup.
Playing cards are invariably included
in the items that are donated to my
artroom each year. Noting the unique
designs on the face cards and the intricate art of the overall design, I was
inspired to formulate a lesson. I went
to the library and found The Age of
Kings, by Charles Blitzer.
The project began with an understanding of the seventeenth-century
European Baroque art movement.
Baroque art is known for its monumentality, balance, and harmony, and
is found in architecture, paintings,
MONUMENTAL Court Cards
and sculpture. The effect of Baroque
art was to overwhelm the viewer
with sheer size (think St. Peter’s and
Versailles). Important Baroque artists include Caravaggio, Rembrandt,
Rubens, and Bernini.
The History and Meaning of Cards
There were no video games in the seventeenth century, but there were court
cards, which were a vain attempt by
royalty to show themselves in the
best light. Although the earliest references to playing cards in Europe date
from 1377, it is thought that cards first
appeared in China, where paper was
invented.
Cards entered Europe from the
Islamic Empire. Original images were
replaced with representations of kings,
queens, knights, and servants.
Who Are You, Really?
The face card of any suit in a deck has
two faces. To help students choose
their face cards, they each took the
Myers-Briggs Personality Test. After
answering truthfully and compil-
ing their scores, they matched up
their Myers-Briggs descriptions with
descriptions of the face cards. General
meanings of face cards are:
The other suits—clubs, diamonds,
and spades—have their own face card
descriptions.
Creating Monumental Cards
To begin, we took black-and-white
photographs of students’ faces in the
card poses of frontal, three-quarter, or
profile. Students
used copies of their
photos to grid and
transfer them to
24 x 36" (61 x 91
cm) paper on which
they would create
their paintings. They were to create
a card with two faces: one was to be
identical to their photograph, and the
other would show their alter ego.
Students were asked to look at
their personality results and find a
way to show their personalities in the
design of the card. Alter egos could
be portrayed in any manner and were
There were no video
games in the seventeenth
century, but there were
court cards.
