PLAYING CARDS

To break the monotony of army life, gambling your wages playing cards has been the solution for centuries.

To break the monotony of a crippled veteran's life, gambling your pension playing cards turns out to be a good solution as well.

Otto Dix, a german machinegunner in the trenches of Flanders in the First World War, made many drawings, etchings and paintings both about the soldier on the battlefield as well as about his distorted post-war life in the big modern city.



Otto Dix, 'Skatspieler' (1920)

HOUSE OF CARDS

Risking ones personal health, building a house of cards -or cardstacking- is one of the most dangerous games.

Bryan Berg takes cardstacking to the limit and is recordholder of the largest construction in free standing cards: a 15-foot replica of Disney World's Cinderella Castle.


'New York City Skyline' (2005)


'Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas' (2006)


'Disney’s Cinderella Castle' (2004)

ACE OF SPADES

The 'card of death' it is called, the ace of spades, famous for it's use in black ops of the Vietnam war.

London based artist Wolfe von Lenkiewicz made a large drawing of a Warholian double-Elvis-Presley-gunslinger with skulls and aces of spades imposed. Death is present in both the death artists as well as the iconography.



Wolfe von Lenliewicz, 'Elvis' from the Plura Culture series (2009)