French Playing Card Sculpture: "Memento Mori" the Art of Death

A skull sits in a stack of paper, and it came out looking comfortable.

Playing Card Sculpture, Memento Mori, The Art of Death, is from France and dates to the 20th century. It is paper. Memento mori, the Latin reminder of mortality, is an old theme in European art, and skulls have long been a favorite emblem of it. Here a human skull is cut deep into a block of layered paper, as if the pages had been dug out. The skull is washed in white and gray, with a hint of red at its edges. Pale, curled sheets frame it on each side. It is 2.38 inches wide, 2.13 deep and 3.5 high.

Mortality, neatly shuffled.