David Palladini’s poster for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre has been mentioned here twice in the past week so it seemed only fair to see whether any of his other work matched that splendid piece. The artist has worked for years as a book illustrator but seems to receive most attention these days for his Aquarian Tarot deck, first produced in 1970 and still being sold today. Many of the card designs show something like the kind of stained-glass window approach he used for his film poster but with less decoration. Far closer to the Herzog piece is a series of posters he made in 1969 depicting his own interpretation of the signs of the zodiac. Every mention I’ve seen of these notes their scarcity which is a shame when many of them are such striking designs. Of particular interest to this Aubrey Beardsley obsessive is seeing that the scale shapes which Palladini put into the “N” of his Nosferatu lettering may, as I guessed, go back to the similar shapes which Aubrey borrowed from Whistler’s Peacock Room; see the peacock-like bird in Aquarius below.
This page has some examples of the Major Arcana designs from Palladini’s Tarot. More of his zodiac posters follow, all of which are courtesy Meibohm Fine Arts.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Druillet’s vampires
• The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever
• The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism
• The art of Pamela Colman Smith, 1878–1951
• Layered Orders: Crowley’s Thoth Deck and the Tarot
• Whistler’s Peacock Room
• The Major Arcana
