This commission from UCL Art Museum as part of the Witnessing Terror: French Revolutionary Prints 1792-94 exhibition, was an exciting opportunity to build on an earlier portfolio of work of playing cards and card games. Unlike those cards, this commission was not just about producing decorative interpretation, but about playfully revealing and educating those who play the game about the figures they depict.
Whereas with most card games, the aim is to get rid of your cards, in games like trumps, the victor is the player who wins the whole deck. It’s is a game of power, and perfectly suited for exploring the revolutionary figures featured in the prints in the exhibition. The cards also mirror the aesthetics of the picture cards from standard card decks. The reversible court cards, or picture cards that depict the same image whichever way up the card is, are thought to have originated in France just forty years before the start of the Revolution. Indeed, examples of playing cards from the period also feature in the exhibition.
While the cards work as a game, or as a learning resource for students and schools, I imagined them being used specifically in the exhibition space, as a playful way for visitors to become more familiar with the figures in the prints. Part of the challenge of this commission was in ensuring the revolutionary figures on the cards closely resembled how they were depicted in the prints, while still making them feel coherent as a set of designs. The design of the cards was based on the way that the depiction of Louis XV is framed, and the cut-out appearance of it.
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