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Episode 8: Color Pie a la Mode, Part I
110 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our eighth episode, Michelle Rapp (@BalefireStrix on Twitter) of Card Kingdom and The Loregoyfs! joins the guys to talk about how we can understand Magic: the Gathering's color pie through real-world art movements. After some brief shenanigans, Michelle takes the guys to art school, as they touch on artistic analogies for White, Blue, Black, and Red.
This is the first part of a two-part episode series, which will conclude in Episode 9.
Finally, the winners of the first 200 followers' giveaway is announced in this episode! At 300 followers on Twitter, we'll do our third giveaway, so keep the word of mouth going!
You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by JDR.
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Transcript
Introduction to Goblin Lore and Color Theory
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. In this episode we talk to Michelle Rapp of Card Kingdom about the color pie and how it relates to certain art movements throughout history. This episode we think is super important because it digs into a real life parallel for the color pie and color theory in Magic the Gathering, sort of a
00:00:30
Speaker
way for you to relate your understanding of the game to a real life analogy or take a real life analogy that you already know and relate it back to the game and the lore and the flavor of colors. We're super grateful to Michelle for coming on to this podcast. We recorded for about two hours in total. So this is split up into two different episodes. So without any further ado, thank you all for listening and let's get to the show.
Guest Introduction: Michelle Rapp
00:01:03
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This week, we are super excited. We are joined by our first guest ever on the show, and she's a doozy. This is...
00:01:18
Speaker
I don't know if that's a compliment. I'm saying it as a compliment, but this is Michelle Rapp. She's a writer for Card Kingdom. She's one of the cast members of another Vorthos podcast, The Lore Goifs. So Michelle is here to talk to us about art movements, how they fit into magic lore on the whole, but also specifically how they fit into color theory and the color pie. But before we go on to the main topics,
00:01:45
Speaker
I would love my lovely co-hosts to introduce themselves, tell the listeners where they can find you on the interwebs, and what piece of magic art or flavor text resonates with you the most. And why don't we start with you, Michelle?
00:02:00
Speaker
Well, hello. Thank you for that very lovely introduction. I have to say I'm very flattered by being called a doozy. That's quite something. Seriously, we're kind of old men on the show. We apologize. Flat out. Well, it's well, it's lovely. So you can find me on the interwebs. I write for Card Kingdom. I also collaborate
00:02:25
Speaker
With the professor, I help write his Tolarian Tudor series, and I also can be found on my Vorthos comedy podcast, The Lore Goifs. We take ourselves extremely seriously as a group of very distinguished, very intelligent Vorthos people, which is why we make lots of ruptured spire jokes. And so...
00:02:47
Speaker
This is a family cast. I don't know.
Personal Favorites in Magic Art and Flavor Text
00:02:52
Speaker
So you can find me on Twitter at bailfirestrix, as in a bail that's on fire, but also there's an owl involved somehow. So the magic flavor text that really, that really resonates with me is actually one from Dominaria. It's actually the one from Lyra Dawnbringer.
00:03:12
Speaker
And I know it's a really heartfelt, kind of sappy one. It's not the funniest, but it does make me feel like very warm and fuzzy inside. It says, you are not alone. You never were. And it just, it just makes me feel like Lyra Donringer herself is there with her kick-ass, amazing glowing stained glass window armor, just like there to give me a very, somehow quite comfortable hug despite all of the plate armor. And it's just great. So it just.
00:03:43
Speaker
It's a wonderful, wonderful piece of flavor text. And I think it's one of the best, honestly. I'm Hobbs Q. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. So my favorite piece of magic art that really resonates right now with me is not actually ever used on a card. It was in a book celebrating the 20th anniversary of Magic the Gathering. We saw this at the light gray art lab art
00:04:12
Speaker
event recently that was literally fan art and art to celebrate the 25th anniversary of magic. They had a copy of this book that I had never seen and in it was a piece by Ed Beard Jr. who was referencing back to his original Nicol Bolas art and it's literally his updated 20 years later bolas and the piece of work is entitled a good book.
00:04:39
Speaker
I think it just really resonates with me to prove that my theories about Bolas are true. All of them. And what theories are those? He sparked because people wouldn't let him read.
00:04:50
Speaker
Oh. I'm your host, Joe Redman. You can find me on Twitter at FinDhorn. That's F-Y-N-D Horn. And I've been really digging into Jeff Miracola's work lately because I'm putting together a deck full of his cards or cards that feature his artwork for the upcoming GP Minneapolis.
00:05:14
Speaker
listeners are gonna hear this after the GP but we're you know we're still in that that lead-up week but so I've seen a lot of raging goblin and I that that has been one of my favorite it's one that's stuck with me forever it's just fantastic flavor tech he raged at the world at his family at his life but mostly he just raged and I I I just there's something about that where
00:05:44
Speaker
I don't know that it necessarily says something about me. Maybe it does. Maybe there's a deeper psychological discussion to be had about that. But I just love that idea of, yeah, he doesn't really know what he wants, what he's raging about. He's just raging. That's just what he does. That's his whole thing. I really liked that Michelle, you pointed out the Lyra Dawnbringer one because we had kind of a discussion yesterday about flavor text and mental health.
00:06:11
Speaker
And the Lyra one got cited as kind of a very popular one that people identified with when talking about their own resiliency and mental health. The other one was from the new Ajani Achantment, and my mind went blank on the card name. I know it when you're talking about it is a... Presence? No? Yeah, Ajani's presence or something like that. It's the one with the golden globey bits. Yes.
00:06:39
Speaker
Ajani's welcome is, I believe, what it's called. And it says, pulling up here, you cannot defend others if your own well-being is neglected. And it's the real first, yeah, it's one of the best mindfulness quotes that we've seen so far in flavor text. And actually, this flavor text was written by another psychologist from San Diego who plays Magic the Gathering.
00:07:06
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, so Billy is his name. People probably know him as Billy sense or Billy San Juan. He is the really, really just Billy and Greyso. He worked a lot of GPs for both Channel Fireball Wizards him and I worked a pro tour together, which is how I really got to know him.
00:07:27
Speaker
Um, he also writes failure texts for wizards recently started and that was one of his first contributions. So that's awesome.
The Philosophical Role of the Color Pie
00:07:35
Speaker
That's a, yeah, that's amazing run. So when we're trying to talk about, you know, we've been having more and more episodes. I mean, we obviously, I'm always kind of trying to bring in the psychological piece. Uh, that flavor text is just really stuck out in the discussion that spiraled from there or I'm not spiraled started from there was, was really good. But Lyra was one of the, another ones that got brought up.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, and I think those are really resonant with people because of where we are in the world right now. There's a lot going on that is messed up. There's a lot going on that's really daunting and bigger than all of us. And I mean, it's nice to have that game that for a lot of us is an escape.
00:08:23
Speaker
also be something that reinforces who we are or what we want or what we want to be. There's something I want to bring up with that a little bit later as we get into our discussions. But yeah, I think that's really great. And it fits with what we're talking about a little bit today in the sense of the color pie and in the sense of philosophy and
00:08:47
Speaker
Hobbs, you're like you said, you're always going to bring in the psychology, but fitting in with philosophy and the color pie and white's philosophy is very much that that self care and group care and all that. So I think that's well, when white is when white is that it's best, right? Yes, absolutely. When white is at its best, it is mindful and selfless and caring and compassionate. And as worse, it's completely intolerant and fascist. So.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, and conformist, to say the least. Yeah. So we're getting a little bit of both these days, actually. Which is actually, I think this is a good transition to just jump in here for us. We talked about the color pie, I think, a little bit in previous episodes. But let's kind of explain very, you know, nuts and bolts for somebody who's never dealt with Magic the Gathering before, or never dealt with this idea of
00:09:46
Speaker
what the color pie and color philosophy is in magic on not just on a game sense, but in a lore sense, in a in a world building sense. Let's let's break that down. When I introduce folks to the color pie, I try to root it as basically the sandbox and the world in which the game is built. I try to liken it to some something like civilization, the game, where you have different leaders with different philosophies on
00:10:14
Speaker
how victory can be attained. And then there's different victories within the game, right? Like you've got your culture victory, you've got your let's kill everyone victory, and let's go to moon slash Mars victory. And the color pie is very similar to that, except instead of like 16 different personalities and also new downloadable content, you basically just have five entities that in their own way kind of encompass a lot of the
00:10:42
Speaker
motivations and philosophies that you can find commonly in a lot of world leaders and a lot of different philosophers and in art movements, but kind of help sort of amplify a little bit of different aspects, I think, of human psychology and human, I guess, just various human attributes. So that's definitely how I try to couch the entire discussion. And
00:11:09
Speaker
We, I always start with, I always go in Wooburg order because, of course, Wooburg, but white, you know, I like to sort of ad lib Mark Rosewater's articles, which generally starts with white and white's always the color that wants peace. And peace is, on the surface can be a great thing. White is, but that doesn't, it doesn't mean that white is a pacifist. It means that it wants, it's victory condition is peace.
00:11:38
Speaker
and order, and it's willing to find that piece through a structure and a system that makes sense according to the values that that particular person wants to implement and enforce on other people. Not everyone's going to understand it and everyone's going to get it, but everyone has their own place within the society and understands what they're doing has a greater purpose. It's for their greater good, as Hot Fuzz might put it.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's the greater good. And so when you think of, and so like we mentioned before, white at its best is egalitarian. It can be incredibly socialist, I suppose, if we're going to throw in some political science terms. It can be extremely benevolent. It can be caring and compassionate. It's a color that sees everyone in its society and wants to make room
00:12:36
Speaker
for that person and make sure that person is provided for. It doesn't mean that person is going to get everything they want, but it does mean that person is going to get everything they need. If we take that structure though and invert it and make it such that anyone who thinks outside of the box is immediately excommunicated, like if we look at the blacklist from I think like 1930s Hollywood where we had
00:13:02
Speaker
directors and other folks being, actually no, that was 1950s, right? Yeah, it was 1950s. But we had directors and people in Hollywood being blacklisted because of their supposed communist leanings, where we basically have an environment that doesn't encourage diversity of thought, that any any threat to the greater good would come from the individual. So squashing that out immediately as soon as possible is imperative for a
00:13:30
Speaker
not necessarily maliciously aligned white force, but definitely, you know, they're not super interested in self-expression, artistic expression that speaks to anything other than the greater values. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, we've talked a little bit about, you know, like the McCarthyism, it's kind of that there's, there's orders and there's laws and whatever the prevailing thought at that moment is needs to be conformed to.
00:13:56
Speaker
So radicals or anybody that's kind of going to have these really more extreme views in the opposite of groupthink really need to be brought into line, which is why it's not so good end. Yes. And it's a really powerful thing, though. I mean, that's one of the reasons why white is such an incredibly powerful color when you unite
00:14:19
Speaker
so many disparate elements into a single goal and concentrate all your efforts in that direction. It is something that's incredibly terrifying.
00:14:30
Speaker
But on the other hand, if you have everybody, it's like this sort of mindless cult person. I mean, that's not going to be super great either. Right. A perfect example of that, that downside of white, that the negative part of white is Kamigawa. The main villain, the main antagonist was a white character. And now he's slipping my mind. Is it Kanda? Thought that the best thing for his people to do would be kidnap
00:14:58
Speaker
a creature from the commie, you know, the commie egg, which became, you know, blah, blah, blah, a long story of Kamigawa. Oh, commie, not communist. Right. Not commies. I was like, we're really going deep on the McCarthy socialism.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, Conda McCarthy, I mean it's close, you know But yeah, no, I think that's a perfect example of it He thought that the best way to benefit his people would be to do that However, he gave no consideration to other groups. He gave no consideration to the You know the balance of the world. It was this it was this small You know sort of protecting his his people his power
00:15:51
Speaker
in that way. So I mean, I know we're already just on white, but we're introducing this larger concept of the color pie right now. So I think I want to just interject a little bit with one thing that we've talked a little bit on the show before about is this concept of continuums versus dichotomies. And I think that it's important to realize that when we're going to be talking about all of these colors at their essence, these colors boiling down to their individual white, blue, black, red, green,
00:16:21
Speaker
no overlap, no looking at color combinations, which is something that makes the color wheel and the color pie in general just completely complex. But even looking within individual colors, we kind of see that white, for instance, can have this extreme order at one end and this more morality or this kind of, like we've talked about, this peace, this mindfulness,
00:16:50
Speaker
I mean, holiness in some ways, which we've seen, these are kind of continuum, so you can move between them. And that's where, you know, I think we're going to be talking a lot about this in general, but the goal for me is always to find the balance. And where you get into trouble is when you start getting to the extremes of both ends.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, I would absolutely agree. As a slight segue, I was actually thinking about artistic expressions within white on the darker side of things.
Art in a Mono-White Universe
00:17:24
Speaker
The first thing that came to mind was Triumph of the Will, which was a Nazi propaganda film that was one of the first of its kind to really do these incredibly silly long takes of people marching forever.
00:17:40
Speaker
deliberately angling shots such that, you know, these, the soldiers looked amazing and really just celebrating the Aryan-ness of what the motherland ought to be under this government. And that's sort of, I think, how art sort of works in a purely mono-white world. It is, to some extent, propaganda because it is
00:18:07
Speaker
I mean, that's the only kind of expression that could exist in a mono-white universe. It's basically art that glorifies the status quo. And that's sort of the problem with white as a color. White is not adaptable. It is the least adaptable of all the colors. Peace is a good thing to have, but when you have dead quiet, it means that there is no sound. There is no ability to make noise.
00:18:38
Speaker
You can't change things. Things are static. White very much loves to, that's why you have a lot of white enchantments and edicts and whatnot, just lay down the law and keep that law there almost in perpetuity. And so the flexibility of white just is not there. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, characters like Gideon, like Johnny have such a hard time looking inside and figuring out how to change those particular flaws within themselves.
00:19:06
Speaker
And they're also, they also can be really judgmental. Yeah. And coming from that art perspective, I really, you bringing up Triumph of the Wills reminds me, you talked about the shots and the way that they were done from angles to make the soldiers look beautiful and to make it look strong. A lot of controversy has been had over the director of the film, because even people such as Spielberg and George Lucas had talked about
00:19:34
Speaker
like her contributions to cinema. Lenny Reifenstahl, if I remember the pronunciation. Yeah, Lenny Reifenstahl. Reifenstahl. Yeah. And then, yeah, it's a really controversial thing because we have these big name directors, one of whom Spielberg is, I mean, obviously directly impacted by the Holocaust, talking about how do you separate the art from the person, which is something I've been struggling with a lot. The death of the author question.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, the death of the author question is very much a question that kind of almost, it's interesting because so if you ask each of the different colors that question, each of them would have a completely different answer. And that's what's really interesting about the color wheel. So if you ask white, like, does the author's intent count towards the interpretation of the piece, then why would absolutely say yes? Because white looks at the whole, white looks at the artist and the creator and sees an indelible
00:20:33
Speaker
um, invalid link between both the work and its creator. Blue would also, blue would maybe be on the, on the edge there. Blue might say no, because blue is more about like what, how does this piece like push forward and progress the field as a whole? And how does it exist in, I guess contention with other ideas within the same space? Um,
00:21:02
Speaker
Black, I think, would also maybe agree with White and say that the author does have some kind of relationship there and that they do matter because you have to see how this piece benefits and amplifies the voice of the artist. Red might just be like, who really cares?
00:21:24
Speaker
And because red is all about freedom of expression. And at the end of the day, it's that freedom that counts the fact that they were able to do that, that that action that counts rather than the necessarily the product or the person who did it. And green is kind of like, it's there, it's just part of the fabric of things. They are both equal. And they are, but they're not as important as the larger context of how this piece is regarded. And so
00:21:52
Speaker
Sorry, I just kind of went on that weird tangent there, because it was like, that's an interesting question. What's funny is actually, I was just going to compliment you on your transition. I thought you were going to move just straight into blue. And either way, that idea of like moving to how the other colors would answer that question was way smoother than most of our transitions on the show. I mean, what's interesting about blue and art is that blue is, I think more, it's like,
00:22:20
Speaker
If I think of a blue artist, I think of the
Blue Art: Technical Mastery and Knowledge
00:22:23
Speaker
Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, because he was technically amazing. If you look at the way his brush strokes, the lighting, that soft haziness that he manages to achieve around his pieces, he's got that perfect trifecta thing going on, I don't know if you noticed, but in a lot of Renaissance art, you've got three people looking at each other, and it's supposed to represent
00:22:51
Speaker
perspective and also like the Holy Trinity and things like that. But he's also like the creator of the Vitruvian Man. He created like the first tank. He's not someone who's like constrained by any particular morality. He's interested in using his artistic talents to pursue
00:23:15
Speaker
knowledge and the furthering of ideas that he has. I mean, he's like one of the first people to, I think, actually do an autopsy, right? So yeah, and so it's amazing. So he's not like, sure, he made the Mona Lisa. But when we think of Leonardo da Vinci, we don't really think about him the same. We would say like Gustav Klimt. Klimt was all about like, let's play around with perspective and flatness and texture and shine. That I think is
00:23:45
Speaker
very, very different than like the way da Vinci was very much all about like, okay, how do I use my beautiful drawing sketching technique in order to capture the way a man's liver is placed in his chest. I was just thinking when you brought up da Vinci, to me that epitomizes blue and we're talking about art. I mean, we have somebody that's known as a master painter for both the Last Supper and
00:24:12
Speaker
Mona Lisa, I mean for at least those two pieces just alone I am somebody who's way more drawn to I would love to have around our house like of a Truvian man or some of the the flying machines or the tanks and the the drawings that are based in mathematics that look at the symmetry of the human being almost look like old med school text I mean my wife and I talked about this like wanting to have that kind of old
00:24:40
Speaker
art that was used in medical textbooks because we didn't have these photos of a liver. You know what I mean? Like we didn't we didn't have a just easy way to look at that. And so if you look at the old even Grey's Anatomy, the original, I mean, there's I love the old scientific drawings that were just so technically beautiful from a sketch standpoint, but we're also purposeful to educate and to teach. Yeah, no, it's and I actually when I was studying at Cornell, I had a
00:25:10
Speaker
um, the good fortune of studying under, um, a professor who had gotten, who is one of the most, um, well-renowned botanical artists, like scientific botanical artists in the world. And it's just like, when she talked about how she, the process by which she goes into creating an illustration, it's not, it's not about trying to capture like light. It's about trying to capture,
00:25:40
Speaker
the components of this particular plant or this particular piece and help explain it in an educational way towards, to the viewer, to the audience. And so it's a very different message in that particular case. It's not that Blue is also, but Blue's also interested in like empathy as well. And so I think that's what's really cool about like pieces that,
00:26:07
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a really strong empathic piece. I almost think like Guernica is probably, maybe, Bipel Picasso is somehow blue in its desire to show you the horrors of what's going on, albeit in a very abstract way. But it really presses upon you the importance of the disaster and the sadness and the waste of the people who
00:26:36
Speaker
died in this particular incident, just because the Nazis were like, oh, well, we just kind of want to test out our planes. So we're going to bomb this tiny town. And yeah, so I think that there are different aspects of blue. And like there were a word white, but I think blue has a little bit more flexibility, not as much as say red. But I think there's a lot there that can be played with in terms of just using art as like
00:27:05
Speaker
not just as a tool of expression, but also of education. So I want to, I had a gut reaction to that about Guernica. I'm not going to lie. No worries. I totally was like, okay, I can go with this, the blue. And yet I'm seeing, to me, I guess I now we're getting into where we either talk about guilds or we talk about these pairs of colors. And, and I mean, I think that my reaction was,
00:27:33
Speaker
No. Yeah. That my impulsivity, my emotions, I am pulling this like the passion that led to him painting that.
00:27:44
Speaker
It's primary red, but I think that the visceral reaction is the empathy aspect. Yeah, no. And I mean, and this is and this is why the color pie in general, it is the founding block for magic. I mean, it is what Richard Garfield intended. But I mean, he they had and he had this idea behind it and it's been codified and it's really been
00:28:08
Speaker
strengthened over the years so the color pie really kind of defines a lot behind how we play the game and it's it's just fascinating to me because we're seeing like you said your reaction to it versus the creation of it could have been along very different axes so i was wondering if you want to finish up on the blue portion i mean we've talked a little bit about it but just thinking of i really want to move into black i don't know i want to move into black too actually
00:28:37
Speaker
It's my favorite color. Yeah, I hear you. White and black are my favorite colors though. But black being like the top here.
Black Art: Power, Wealth, and Opulence
00:28:51
Speaker
I think art in black is all about the celebration of the self. And I think the epitome of art within black is a portrait. It primarily like, you know, those like older portraits done by Vermeer, the Dutch masters, as well as Italian, like the Medici's,
00:29:07
Speaker
You basically have a person standing there surrounded by symbolic objects expressing their power and like what industries they're involved in is basically just like a resume, but not even a resume, it's like a
00:29:21
Speaker
Look at me, look how awesome I am with my sumptuous silks and the fact that I have salt. It's a painting version of the Egyptian pharaoh tombs, basically. I mean, it's all of the things that you want to show everybody, look, this is what I've got. Yeah, it's a display of power, is the heart of portraiture. And it's been that way for such a long time. I mean, who has portraits?
00:29:51
Speaker
people who were sitting down and commissioning people to actually paint them. So the Vanderbilt, the Rothschilds, I mean, Gustav Klimt, as I mentioned before, did a number of portraits for very well-renowned ladies of French and Italian society. And so it's kind of a big deal. It's there to show things off. It's also there to show off your beauty and what you can afford, which is really amazing, which is what
00:30:21
Speaker
I mean, if we contrast this, for example, with like, like the portraits that, not portraits so much, but like the snapshots of like Toulouse-Lautrec in the Moulin Rouge, he would often do like pictures of like, I would say this is, Toulouse-Lautrec is more red, green, personally, but he's definitely very red when he like shows off these pictures and like moments of dancers, who probably are also ladies of negotiable affection on the side, they're not anyone
00:30:51
Speaker
They're not anyone super important in family show. Family. I'm sorry. We're talking about art and that's going to inevitably rub up against some things. Whoa. Rub up against some things. Oh, man. It's off the rails. But but yeah, like I just think the portrait is such a perfect, perfect thing for black. That and I also like work intricate works of craft.
00:31:19
Speaker
Like, I think that, you know, things like Fabergé eggs and whatnot, it's such like a black thing to have. Like, look at me. I have a freaking egg made of crystal and gold with a tiny little thing that makes tiny pigs inside. Like, I have no idea, you know? Like, it's just insanity.
00:31:36
Speaker
Well, that's kind of why I loved when we went to Kaladesh in Magic and we got to see Gonti, you know, the Aetherborn sort of crime syndicate leader. His card title literally is Gonti, Lord of Luxury. And all he does is collect these beautiful pieces of art and artifacts and, you know, he adorns himself with all of these
00:31:59
Speaker
intricately wrought, you know, metal filigree plates and and of mask, and all these things. I mean, that's that to me is that sort of, like you said, the de Medici sort of, you know, adorn yourself adorn your life, you know, show your power through what you have. Black is very extra when it comes to art. So, so very extra.
00:32:24
Speaker
just the most extra. Yeah, it's interesting. You bring up the Medici kind of reminded me Michelle just talked about her favorite being the black white combination. And I really hit on that when we're talking about people who would have like be patrons and it's because they want to be able to afford the best people to make their art or be able to afford the best portraits of themselves, which kind of reminds me of the Orzhov. Oh, yeah, totally. Like when you when you think of I keep bringing up Clint because I just saw it
00:32:54
Speaker
tiny documentary on it, but, um, like he, he fricking used like gold leaf on his paintings. He's known for it. And that was just a show of like, look at how, how, how bougie I can fake your portrait. Um, and, and I mean, like, that's, I think that's true for the meta cheese too. When you look at like any of their paintings, like, like making lapis into, or, or making, um,
00:33:22
Speaker
Pigments is just such an onerous task and the skill and the money involved to just create such a thing. It's such an expression of power and that's what Black loves the most. It's the reason why I think Liliana is the most well-dressed of the Gatewatch because she knows that looking good is another subtle way of grabbing power.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, so that's pretty much all I'd say on black because it's just so succinct like that. But yeah, like big statues to yourself that's very black. I feel like there's a lot of black in architecture too, depending on how it's used. You know, some of those beautifully, like you're saying the gold leaf that Klimt used on his paintings. I mean, there's a lot of those
00:34:11
Speaker
Now, gosh, it's been so long since I've had an art history class. The name of Louis XIV's palace.
00:34:20
Speaker
Versailles? Thank you. Yes, Versailles. Oh my gosh. Imagine being somebody walking into the court of the Sun King and you're just blown away by how much opulent wealth there is literally dripping from the walls. I mean, that's a tradition that continues until today. I mean, when you look at time's cover, you know, with like your portrait being taken by Anne Leibovitz or someone else and your face is on there as the notorious new time person of the year or
00:34:50
Speaker
I don't know you. For MTV Cribs? I mean, that's, you know, like for all you millennials out there. Yes. I'm just going to be over here with my avocado stash. But yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's that it's that opulence. It's that example of power. And I think that's perfect. Red is freaking like the fountain. Yeah, it's the dada. It's dada. It's a dada. It's a surrealist.
00:35:19
Speaker
It's the modernist like I the futurists even too and this is yeah we talk about continuum here with Dada and and Futurism and and that I think futurism is right at its worst and and I have a big opinion on this but also futurism essentially was thinking about how we can how we can take the concepts of speed and power and you know
00:35:45
Speaker
travel and progression and machine and condense it down into art. And, you know, on the surface of that, I think that's a really fascinating and compelling concept. Myakovsky was a Russian futurist and Tommaso Marinetti was an Italian futurist and both of them had really fascinating perspectives on this, on this form.
00:36:10
Speaker
you know they would take I mean it was a little bit you know they had some ideas that were similar to cubism or execution that was similar they had really fractured you know splotches of of color on paintings and and a lot of it was just trying to capture that idea of what is something zooming past your eye you know how do you make that a crystallized moment um really some of their best stuff in my mind is sculpture but the philosophy behind it is so
00:36:39
Speaker
You know, it's so, it's a little bit of, it's red at its worst in that it's all about passion and fury and it's, it's raging goblin. It's passion and fury and rage, you know, at the cost of anything else. It's burn it all down. You know, it's, it's burn it all down so we can build something new, but then it's build something new so we can burn it all down again. And that to me is, is that darker side of, of where red goes.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, I go ahead. Sorry.
Red Art: Chaos, Order, and Interaction
00:37:12
Speaker
I just want it. This is just a random fact because what you're bringing up a little bit with this is the chaos nature of red, but there is and can be order to it.
00:37:25
Speaker
The reason I bring this up when it comes to art movements is one of the most fascinating things that I learned recently, and I don't know if either of you have heard about this. If you want, Joe, I can send you the article so that it can be loaded. Please do. You guys know who Jackson Pollock is. Of course. Jackson Pollock is famous for our listeners. If you haven't seen his work, he did drip paintings, and he's also kind of known for being that kind of
00:37:50
Speaker
the person that everybody's like, my kids could just do that, you know, drip paint onto a can, throw it all over the wall. I don't know if you guys know this, but they actually can use fractal analysis, which is a really within chaos theory and mathematic fractals are these complex, very ordered in some ways, designs that look random or chaotic at first. Using fractals, they can actually validate whether something is or is not
00:38:19
Speaker
a Jackson Pollock painting. What? Stop applying blue to my red paintings, yo. Right. But I mean, there is kind of this that shows that they are fractal, the fingerprint of nature they talk about. But there actually has been use of this to validate or to kind of show that some of the paintings were his in terms of people trying to pass off work or show them. So
00:38:45
Speaker
we again get this really the complexity of art and even within chaos and we've talked about chaos theory on this task before and that you can have order out of chaos and I think that when we're talking about art within a red realm even something like drip painting there is a whole study of nature on fractals that talk about why we find them pleasing to the eye and that even chaos can be calming or look beautiful to the eye.
00:39:16
Speaker
But there's, but what I love about, okay, so I actually do have a soft spot for this Jada is the Surrealists and the artists of Fluxus, um, because they like, and Duchamp, because they, they are pushing expression. They are all about expression and the, um, egalitarian nature of like anyone, everyone is entitled to making art.
00:39:44
Speaker
regardless of who you are. And the artist I actually think of whenever I consider like red at its purity and in terms of art is Yoko Ono. And I know she gets a lot of hate, but so Yoko Ono was one of the first artists to do, it's almost like prescriptive art. So basically they're, for example, like it create, so she would create these instruction manuals basically of just like,
00:40:15
Speaker
of you to create, like this is how you create art. One was like light a match, hold it until the flame goes out, watch the smoke dissipate. And that was the piece, that was the performance. And it's like she took that performance art to the next level and really kind of helped invite people to come in and to share that space with them because for so long art has been this conversation, this one-sided conversation between the artist and the audience and now
00:40:43
Speaker
For example, when she did Cut Piece, which was a performance piece that she did back in the 1960s, she basically sat there and had people cut off pieces of her clothing using scissors. And it was a very interesting setup because she was basically inviting people to come and interact with her in a really close physical setting. It almost reminds me of Marina Abramovic,
00:41:12
Speaker
She is another very well-known performance artist. She did a living door where she and another guy, they were naked and they were standing in the doorway of this door. And the people who were invited to this exhibit had to pass between the two of them. And so it really helped people challenge and engage with this idea of like, what is privacy? How do I feel as I go through this door? How does this challenge my norms?
00:41:38
Speaker
are my norms of what private space is? Are they even valid? And that's what I really love about this aspect of the art history. It's just this idea of constantly challenging what it is to create art. What is the intent of the artist? How does the audience engage with the artist? And how much should art be institution versus for the people?
00:42:08
Speaker
And I think that's just what's really brilliant about this particular aspect of history, even though it's kind of weird and consists of eggs and very randomly recorded instruments and paper.
00:42:25
Speaker
That's our show. You can find the podcast on Twitter at goblinlorpod. You can email us any questions, comments, or concerns at goblinlorpodcast at gmail.com. You can find Joe Redman at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D horn on Twitter. You can find Hobbs Q at Hobbs Q and you can find Alex at Alexander New M.
00:42:52
Speaker
One last bit of business before we go. We do have a giveaway to announce thanks to reaching our 200 follower goal on Twitter. This giveaway we are going to be giving away an original magic paperback novel that may or may not have a little gift tucked in alongside as a bookmark. And so our random draw winner here is
00:43:17
Speaker
Max. That's at MTG underscore JLP on Twitter. So Max, get in contact with us. Let us know where we can send your prize to. And we'll have a couple of choices for you as well. For everyone else, please keep retweeting the episodes of the show. Please tell your friends about us. Word of mouth is the best way to spread news about a podcast. So if you like what we're doing, please let other people know.
00:43:43
Speaker
And when we get to 300 followers, we will have another giveaway. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.