Minimalist decks?

It depends on whether you're talking about minimalist art, or minimalist lifestyle. (Now I'm thinking about an actual minimalist art deck.... or maybe Abstract Expressionist....)

Minimalism means not having little, but having only what is necessary. So for me, some decks that are on the minimalist side don't really succeed because, like the over-zealous follower of internet organization gurus, they've thrown out things they actually need in favor of a minimalist aesthetic.

I like abstract art, but there's a fine line between abstracted and poorly drawn. A good artist can control their abstraction: they know the important points of the figure, they know proportion and anatomy, and their abstraction makes sense; much of what passes for abstraction now is really amateur or 'naive' art. And there's certainly a place for that, and I think that everyone should expressing their creativity, what ever their ability. But in a tarot deck it's not usually my personal cup of tea.

Le Fanu said:

I personally find that minimalist decks have a short shelf life. They are always exquisite in theory. I'm not asking for a Hermetic-runic-cabbalistic overload. Far from it. I find that minimalistic decks are immediately very appealing - they seem fresh and clean-slate-like but in practice, there are no layers.

Of course one can sort of scry into the blank spaces, but you can probably do that with a white bathroom tile or whitewashed wall.

It's true, there are a lot of them right now. The trend will pass. A part of all those things I thought I liked, such as imagery with bones and lone feathers and quartz crystals and empty space. I look at decks as and when they come out and you can't really lump them all together but as a general style, I can read with them for about half a dozen times and then they seem flat and I crave more details to chew on.

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This is the crux of it for me. It become like that old Wendy's commercial: "Where's the beef?"

the Physics Tarot. comes in a sand-coloured linen bag with just about nothing, and, delightfully, no shrink-wrap.

Each card shows only a formula and a tiny scientific diagram. It's astonishingly readable even for a humanities-educated bint like me.

Barleywine said:

Being a perennial skeptic and sometime curmudgeon, my first thought is that it's an attempt to cash in on tarot's resurgent popularity without having to develop a full arsenal of artistic and symbolic competencies.

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Not for the first time here has this made me think we're birds of a feather, Barleywine. This is exactly what went through my mind when I first saw the Mesquite deck, which is pretty in its soft, muted way but seems woefully bereft of any real substance. However, if some people find the images prompt their intuition in ways that more detailed decks do not, more power to them. Perhaps my lukewarm feeling for these decks is due to a lack of imaginative faculties on my own part? (I don't think so, for the record, but self-examination in cases like this is always worthwhile.)

Le Fanu said:

I personally find that minimalist decks have a short shelf life. They are always exquisite in theory. I'm not asking for a Hermetic-runic-cabbalistic overload. Far from it. I find that minimalistic decks are immediately very appealing - they seem fresh and clean-slate-like but in practice, there are no layers ( ... ) I look at decks as and when they come out and you can't really lump them all together but as a general style, I can read with them for about half a dozen times and then they seem flat and I crave more details to chew on.

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Yes, this also sums up my feelings about many of these decks quite nicely. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein re: Oakland, there's no there there in many of these decks. It explains why I've largely stopped using my Wild Unknown deck: what at first seemed like a refreshingly enigmatic set of imagery became flat and uninteresting after reading from it a handful of times. It felt like there wasn't much to seek my teeth into, and my readings with the deck were slipping towards the vague and platitudinous as a result.

I do admire that Golden Thread deck from a design perspective, and will say that its accompanying app is one of the best designed and useful Tarot apps I've come across (plus it's free). But I can't see the actual deck replacing any of my trusty RWS decks or my Thoth or Aquarian or new Pagan Otherworlds (an example of a contemporary deck which does manage to incorporate a good deal of juicy symbolism into its exquisite design) anytime soon.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on this; you've given me a lot to think about.

Meanwhile, I ran across the Kawaii Tarot in the day or so since I started this thread, and it strikes me as the ultimate apotheosis of the minimalist tarot genre. How much more pared down can you get?

https://kawaiitarot.com

For me this depends entirely on how skilfully what is there has been executed and how nuanced it is. I haven't got any real knowledge of esoteric symbols, astrological and elemental associations and numerology, so much of this currently goes over my head (I hope that will change). Perhaps this is why some of the minimalist decks do work really well for me, because I can only really look the art and see whether it tells me a human story. Decks like Linestrider and Personal Space Tarot I really like, because they seem to me to say quite a lot without being stuffed full of bits and bobs. I don't see them as being any more minimalist than for example the RWS. Some decks are just plain minimal though. Thelema for me falls into that category and whilst the art is not sparse like Wild Unknown for example, the content is so much thinner.

This one isn't sparse, but it's certainly "thin."

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/stick-figure/

Same stick figures but with color. I can see myself reading with this one

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/celestial-stick-people/

I just found Tarot of the Plants:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/250981399/the-tarot-of-plants-deck?ref=sr_similar_target

It's a bit spare but I think it looks full of meaning.

I was going to say that I don't have any minimalist decks, but oh, I actually have one I think counts as just that: The Tarot Nova http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/nova/

The cards have one simple image on a black background in the center. Majors are a little more detailed than the minors. Interestingly I thought this deck was gonna be easier to read for me since it isn't very much going on, but I found I actually like a bit more happening in my cards. It's small, cute and I love the artwork so I'll keep it in my collection untill I'm feeling a little more proficient and in the mood for connecting with this one.

The Golden Thread Tarot does look very good and design wise a lot of these decks are doing something right - as in pleasant to look at and very beautiful. I too wonder how they are to read with. I've recently started to take notice of what symbol or area my eyes wander to in the cards and as most of mine aren't very minimalist I wonder how that would work in a deck with much less details.