“Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”
 –René Magritte

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
 –Pablo Picasso

By now, the cards of the award-winning storytelling game Dixit have elicited far more than a thousand words. You yourself might have gone on journeys led by images of genies, ghosts, and toys come alive. Or perhaps you delved deep into shared memories, recalling when you played video games for a whole day, celebrated Christmas with a new family member, danced outside in the snow, or went on your first candlelit dinner date. 

Now, Dixit: Revelations invites you to go beyond what you see at first glance and discover what lies hidden between—or hidden by—the lines. Featuring art by the French illustrator Marina Coudray, Dixit: Revelations looks utterly unlike any Dixit expansion that has preceded it. Coudray’s mysterious and enchanting images are heavily influenced by early twentieth century design, from the Art Deco movement to Surrealism, even while they convey stories and ideas that may be millennia old. In her art you’ll find echoes of Picasso, Magritte, Matisse, Escher, Greek myth, Indian religion, pop music, internet memes, and much, much more. 

Ancient Substance in a Modernist Style

In these stylized pieces, reminiscent of New York City’s architecture and glass Tiffany lamps, you’ll find many allusions to ancient myths and folk tales. For example, the card above and on the left, is an athlete wearing ancient Greek garb, racing against an ornate clock. On the right you might see the solitary Greek goddess Artemis, famous for her deadly arrows. But the image also contains allusions to Aphrodite, the goddess of love who was arose out the foam of the sea. In the middle are the ant and the grasshopper from Aesop’s fable. According to Aesop, the ant worked tirelessly while the grasshopper sang all summer. When winter hit, the grasshopper starved to death and the ant survived. Yet here something else is going on: the grasshopper seems to have enslaved the ant to work on his behalf. 

Snapshots of Contemporary Life

While reaching towards the ancient and timeless, Coudray’s images also have everything to do with our present. She retells the story of Narcissus, who perished from self-love, through a picture of a dinosaur taking a selfie while in the background, a comet falls towards earth. The sight of two boys sitting and reading together beneath a tree takes on a richer meaning when you realize that the book is a photo album and that the tree shading them is their interracial family tree. A woman sitting on a chessboard is revealed, by the chess pieces on her arm and the kneeling white knight, to be a personification of the game's black queen. She wears a modern style of dress and painted red toenails even while her gold headress, sandals, and bangles hearken back to more traditional African adornments, with the result that she transcends the historical and the contemporary, the mythic and the real. 

What Will You Reveal? 

There is no one way to interpret the images of Dixit: Revelations, but there are countless discoveries to make and stories to tell. Only through playing Dixit will you begin to find out how much there is to reveal. 

Sleeve Recommendations:

84 Cards - Mayday Dixit Yellow 80mm x 120mm