Robert Filliou | The Obvious Deck

Robert Filliou

The Obvious Deck

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1967

12 x 9.5 x 2 cm.

Edition never realized

The Obvious Deck is a deck of cards in which the front or back of each playing card is printed the same, allowing your opponents to see your hand. 

The work was intended as a project for Implosions, Inc., the publishing venture of George Maciunas, Herman Fine and Robert Watts. Multiple prototypes exist, or at least label and label designs, but the work never made it into production. This is presumably due to the cost of printing, as many other Fluxus card games involved the alteration of existing commercial decks. 

The above examples of the George Maciunas label design are from he Lila & Gilbert Silverman collection (now at MoMA), and Fondazione Bonotto.  

Jon Hendrick’s comprehensive Fluxus Codex lists the work advertised in no fewer than five Fluxus Newsletters, spanning just over two years: March 8, 1967, Spring 1967, January 31, 1968, December 2, 1968, March 15, 1969. The price listed is $6, which was on the higher side for Fluxus boxed works. 

The Obvious Deck shares much in common with Fluxus chess sets by Yoko Ono and Takako Saito and with Adam David Brown's transparent deck Play By Trust, which borrows its name from Ono's all white chess set.