Cruel Thing

Luciano Vecchio's Cruel Thing, published by the venerable Spanish card house Fournier in 2009, commits to a three-color constitution: black, white and red only, at a slightly smaller than standard size, and the archive review's verdict is that it packs a wealth of delicate art inside those strict limits. The palette is tarot's oldest dramatic shorthand, ink, page and blood, and holding all seventy-eight cards to it produces a deck that reads like a single sustained graphic statement. Constraint is the engine: with color removed as a signal, line and composition do all the meaning-carrying, and Vecchio's delicacy keeps the reduction elegant rather than harsh, despite the bruising name. Fournier's production pedigree gives it a card-quality floor most indie minimal decks cannot match. It suits minimalists, graphic designers and printmakers, readers who find full-color decks noisy, and collectors of European publisher curiosities. Readers who navigate by color symbolism will be flying on instruments here, which is rather the exercise.