Poker Art is something that poker fans may enjoy collecting, and the industry is large enough. Anything from Super Mario chip art to stylish monochrome photographs with titles such as Gunslinger and No Chance, are being produced. With no nuance to entice the eye of a connoisseur it is primarily commercial products.
With an eye fro the game's complex aesthetics, the serious poker player may have a general interest in is poker in art when he is not challenging a worthy rival. Is there an existence of good art which is significantly related to poker?
Worthwhile references to the game in art are rare, despite its immense popularity, and some admirers cherish them with the elite pride of the devotees of some wonderful esoteric practice. Mainly in modern compositions poker in music is featured, but for its expression in sound there does not seem to be much possibility. Video usually accompanies the more successful efforts, and these are restricted to MTV clips. Poker is referenced in many songs, but mostly a half-hearted solace is offered. Usually well meaning fans or poker pros that are not necessarily great with words or music are the composers of such songs.
The Card Party: Ballet in Three Deals, is the most significant poker-inspired artwork in music in which I am familiar. Music and visuals are ideally fused by its nature and was first danced by Balanchine's American Ballet Ensemble. It is one of the rarer curiosities poker admirers might want to see, with music by Stravinsky, who enjoyed poker as a pastime. It is more fanciful than accurate in representing the process of playing cards.
The most obvious example in painting form is Cassius Coolidge's series of Dogs Playing Poker. Nineteen commercially oriented paintings using anthropomorphized dogs was the order in which these were a part of. It is not even the paintings which are iconic so much, these days, as the general concept of canines around a table in a dimly lit club smoking cigars.
In fact, many works of art tend to stylize poker and card games in general, blending them with fantastic themes. The most obvious example would be Alice in Wonderland. One of Alexander Pushkin's most popular stories is The Queen of Spades which concerns a player desperate to learn a card trick he had heard about from a friend. The story begins as realism and culminates as a sort of card-game horror: the man is so desperate to learn the secret from the old widow guarding it that he threatens her with a pistol (unloaded), unintentionally causing her to die of fear. At the funeral, her corpse opens its eyes and glares at him; then her ghost visits him at his house and discloses the secret. In his first game afterwards the man doubles his possessions. He plays another, but though he knows he was holding an ace, somehow, he appears to have played a queen and lost everything. He is then committed to room 17 of an asylum, raving: Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!. For the film buffs, there is a BAFTA-nominated'49 British adaptation fantasy-horror adaptation of the story by Thorold Dickinson.
Though not necessarily more accurate, poker tends to be criminally realistic in film, from Cincinnati Kid to Rounders with Edward Norton and Matt Damon. Rounders did moderately in the box office but because of its decent depiction of the playing process it has become a cult film. Martin Scorsese gave us a memorable sequence in Casino, three years earlier, where by means of a hammer and De Niro's poker-face threats a young pair of con poker players are expertly detected and deprived to cheat in any near future.
With an eye fro the game's complex aesthetics, the serious poker player may have a general interest in is poker in art when he is not challenging a worthy rival. Is there an existence of good art which is significantly related to poker?
Worthwhile references to the game in art are rare, despite its immense popularity, and some admirers cherish them with the elite pride of the devotees of some wonderful esoteric practice. Mainly in modern compositions poker in music is featured, but for its expression in sound there does not seem to be much possibility. Video usually accompanies the more successful efforts, and these are restricted to MTV clips. Poker is referenced in many songs, but mostly a half-hearted solace is offered. Usually well meaning fans or poker pros that are not necessarily great with words or music are the composers of such songs.
The Card Party: Ballet in Three Deals, is the most significant poker-inspired artwork in music in which I am familiar. Music and visuals are ideally fused by its nature and was first danced by Balanchine's American Ballet Ensemble. It is one of the rarer curiosities poker admirers might want to see, with music by Stravinsky, who enjoyed poker as a pastime. It is more fanciful than accurate in representing the process of playing cards.
The most obvious example in painting form is Cassius Coolidge's series of Dogs Playing Poker. Nineteen commercially oriented paintings using anthropomorphized dogs was the order in which these were a part of. It is not even the paintings which are iconic so much, these days, as the general concept of canines around a table in a dimly lit club smoking cigars.
In fact, many works of art tend to stylize poker and card games in general, blending them with fantastic themes. The most obvious example would be Alice in Wonderland. One of Alexander Pushkin's most popular stories is The Queen of Spades which concerns a player desperate to learn a card trick he had heard about from a friend. The story begins as realism and culminates as a sort of card-game horror: the man is so desperate to learn the secret from the old widow guarding it that he threatens her with a pistol (unloaded), unintentionally causing her to die of fear. At the funeral, her corpse opens its eyes and glares at him; then her ghost visits him at his house and discloses the secret. In his first game afterwards the man doubles his possessions. He plays another, but though he knows he was holding an ace, somehow, he appears to have played a queen and lost everything. He is then committed to room 17 of an asylum, raving: Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!. For the film buffs, there is a BAFTA-nominated'49 British adaptation fantasy-horror adaptation of the story by Thorold Dickinson.
Though not necessarily more accurate, poker tends to be criminally realistic in film, from Cincinnati Kid to Rounders with Edward Norton and Matt Damon. Rounders did moderately in the box office but because of its decent depiction of the playing process it has become a cult film. Martin Scorsese gave us a memorable sequence in Casino, three years earlier, where by means of a hammer and De Niro's poker-face threats a young pair of con poker players are expertly detected and deprived to cheat in any near future.
About the Author:
The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker and receives Rakeback at Gutshot Poker and Rakeback at Doyle's Room.
