Antrum Platonicum
Queen of Spade playing card based on Plato's Two World.
Playing cards have always been considered as one of the oldest games. As the world is evolving, the cards don't just stay as a medium of games; they are often valued as medium of art and design. Here, I designed the Queen of Spade card among other 53 designers, each designing one card.
The idea is to make it function as a regular playing card, but with a more interesting look. The design adopted one of the lessons I got from the Philosophy of Art class: Plato's Two World which consists of the Idea World and the Mimesis World. I used black and gold as the primary colors to support the illustration.
The text used in the border is the original text taken from the Plato's Allegory of the Cave (Antrum Platonicum) by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna. The allegory is presented by Plato in his work The Republic (514a–520a).
The Idea World is described as being abstract, spiritual, ideal, perfect, eternal, genuine, etc. It is the base and foundation of the real world we occupied, sort of the blue print. The Idea World is so transcendental. Related to the Queen of Spade, I envisioned the Idea World as the idealistic figure—the perfect figure. The Queen of the Idea World is like an angel. She has this extraordinary beauty, perfection, wealth, and all good matters within her.
The Mimesis World on the other side is the opposite of the Idea World. It is mortal, not eternal, not perfect, and always changing; it is the world we are living now (the material world). The Queen of the Mimesis World on the contrary is not as ideal as the Queen from the Idea World. She is mortal, her beauty can fade within times; she's just not a perfect figure like the one from the Idea World. She is more like us, who have a dream to be immortal, perfect, and happy with all the goodness we have. Yet we still wandering in this "mirror" world, looking for the highest value; looking for perfection.
