This deck is a visually sumptuous collection of surrealistic collage artwork.  Unlike a lot of surreal art, however, this has a bright and sunny feel to it, none of the depressing overtones are present.  I did feel a vast difference between the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana, which I can't exactly pin down into words.  Perhaps it is a qualitative measure in the artwork itself.  The Major Arcana appear to be more a collage of timeless, transcendant paintings, where the Minor Arcana look to be photomontages of modern-day people and settings.

At any rate, there is a hollowness to the Minor cards which might be the lack of apparent symbolism.  It feels like the artist attempted to create photomontages of the traditional designs of Minor cards from other decks.

The Major Arcana are so breathtakingly beautiful in this deck that it is really almost worth buying just for those cards.  It's almost like the two sections of the deck were made by different people, or at different phases in the artist's development.

The deck is standard sized and shuffles easily and comfortably.  The suits appear to be the standard ones, Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles.  The only time those suit names are mentioned is in the court cards.  The collage work in the suits seems to be well done but at times the figures in them look stretched, or skewed.

This deck definitely removes anything which is specific to any particular religion or faith, so it would be a decent deck to use when with a mixed audience.  It's definitely an art collectible.  The symbolism is present but it is quite obscure and the reader would have to be skilled to recognize it.  I do think it would make a good deck for meditation.

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Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace
 
Gendron Tarot by Melanie Gendron
published by US Games Systems, Inc.
ISBN 1527810653