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I considered blue/black to be potential. (As opposed to green, which says "you are what you are".) These colors get the best card draw. (Let's be honest: Black gets better card draw than green, and sometimes even blue.) Blue says nothing can stop any of us from being what we want to be, and black says nothing can stop me from doing whatever I want. (This is the logical extreme, but still...)

When you get to tri-color, you just need to think of them as the absence of the guild at its worst. So Jund would be absolute freedom, for instance.

Green and Blue is Intuition and Technical Mastery--it is Wabi-Sabi. It is the mastery of a technique that is intuitive. It is the delineation of an entire mountain landscape with three simple brushstrokes. It is refining your intuitive knowledge through communion with the self and through a careful relationship with the chance forces of the external world. When your process makes room for the harmonious accident, you will achieve Green/Blue enlightenment. Think of art as a Martial Art and you see where Green/Blue excels.

Blue and Red is Technical Mastery and Experiential Emotion--it is Inward-Facing Alchemy. It is the expression of sensation with the precision and power that comes from a scientific understanding of aesthetics. It's learning the beats and methods of your art and then using them to create an explosion of cathartic force. Blue/Red doesn't wait for quiet mastery or tradition, it synthesizes opposites in an alchemical orgy. Blue/Red boils. Think of art as a rocket ship and you see where Blue/Red excels.

Red and White is Experiential Emotion and Conscientious Order--it is Bold Idealism. Red/White feels Very Strongly About Things and it is Going To Tell You So, By God. It is dramatic design used to communicate a manifesto, it is tension, it is energy, it is the will to demand change through art. Red/White turns its eyes outward and uses its understanding of empathy to demand a better world. Think of art as the barricades of Paris and you see where Red/White excels.

White and Black is Conscientious Order and Courageous Will--it is Ideological Triumph. While Red/White seeks to mobilize and energize, White/Black eschews such tactics. After all, White/Black is convinced that it has already won. White/Black is the master of great and weighty monuments to gods and, perhaps more fittingly, to mortals. When the ambassadors from the Kievan Russ beheld the Orthodox Litergy they were unsure whether they were on Earth or on Heaven. So it is with White/Black. Think of art as an Absolute Monarchy and you see where White/Black excels.

Black and Green is Courageous Will and Intuition--it is Canny Creation. Perhaps the rarest of forms, Black/Green at its best knows how to balance the will to carve a niche with the need to find one. It is art that carefully and cleverly navigates an often hostile and resistant world in order to find funding, buyers, backers, and easily swayed executives. It recognizes that sometimes compromise is necessary, but said compromise is ultimately short-term--once Black/Green is established you'll see the Individual Will reassert itself once more. Think of art as a hostile corporate takeover and you see where Black/Green excels.



My own random thoughts:

The Black side of art scares me, but I respect it deeply. All the Black combinations are important and perhaps even essential, I think.

I understand Green the least, but I tried to at least abstractly grasp its interests in order to put this together. Not sure how well I did.

I'm probably White/Blue/Red based on these descriptions, with occasional touches of Black. That biases both my own work and my critical analysis. I think reading a lot of my articles will make that apparent. If I had to describe myself it would be in Nephilim terms: I am a being defined less by presence but by lack of that spark of intuition and natural understanding. Maybe I'm being too down on myself there though? I don't know.

Anyway, that's The Colors At Their Best In Art. 

Dec 23, 2012 -- 9:12PM, BeastEngine wrote:

Supremely astute, Keeper. I know ****-all about art, but I feel like I learned something reading that.

 

For the first time I believe, I truly agree with Beast. A terrible things has happened today.

It's worth to note that magick is art. While MTG magic is presumably not, as far as the real world is concerned, Keeper has deciphered the mechanics of spells.

Well, I'm still deeply examining my stance, but I think I am Red/White. My serious artistic work usually demands for people to listen to the message. Of course, I can also be considered White/Black, given that it frequently makes use of examples to show why I won the moral debate.