Late last night in a blurry half awake state the thought pinged across my mind, "Wow, I sure do love how there's still some really abstract and surreal Magic art."

And then it was followed by "...But IS there though?"

And then I thought "I'm still hungry, maybe tomorrow I'll eat some of these student papers, that would be aklhsafdkjsa sfkj hkae ccauzukue ewaui" and I think after that I fell asleep.

But the initial thoughts stuck with me!

Now, "surrealism" is probably not a perfect fit for what I'm talking about--to an extent I'm cashing in on the wide cultural misconception that "surreal" means the same thing as "weird" which hey it's expedient even if it makes me die a little inside as an art historian. Abstract isn't quite what I mean either but it encompasses some other portion of what I'm talking about.

Part of the problem I think is differentiating between weird fantasy art and something more surreal and abstract, and I think for me the boundary line is that fantasy art at its weirdest shows strange things happening in a naturalistic way ("Frodorealism") whereas the art that I'm interested in here depicts things that are metaphorical in nature, through either the depiction of a symbolic event, or through the depiction of something in a heavily stylized way.

For example, one of my absolute favorite pieces of art is Treacherous Betrayal:



Is this spell a depiction of someone being turned into a poorly constructed marionette and then forced to saw himself in half?

I.... kinda doubt it. What we're seeing here I think is something more metaphorical.

Terror blurs the boundaries between the literal and the metaphorical:



It's totally conceivable that this represents something literally happening but it's also plausible that this is a metaphor for experiencing a fear so great that you are literally scared to death.

We can also get things that may literally happen but that are depicted with heavy abstraction and stylization:



Now, there's never been a LOT of cards like this, but just subjectively I can't help but feel like in Theros, Tarkir, and now Zendikar we've gotten less art like this than we did in the preceding period. There was a point where Jeremy Jarvis was explicitly introducing more art like this to the game, and that strategy seems to have, to some extent, fallen by the wayside. Just browsing through the cards legal in Modern I'm definitely noticing that the cards jumping out to me as having this element of the nonliteral tend to be grouped more towards the beginning of the timeline than the end, with some notable exceptions popping up in core sets.

This isn't to say that contemporary Magic art is bad, though I must admit the push towards greater and greater emphasis on video game visuals leaves me cold. Rather I'm just interested to hear if I'm correct in noting this change, and what that change might mean in a broader sense.

Besides, this is an art board nominally so let's discuss some art.

Where would Horribly Awry fit in your scale for this?

Well, one thing I caught in a recent article is that Jeremy is now less involved with the actual direction of set art and more dictating the direction of the property. There had been a distinct and noteworthy soft towards, as they put it, a consistent visual identity, which as a chef once said, consistency is a death sentence. It leads to stagnation.

That being said, there are a few cards I can think of recently that emphasize the metaphorical, though in a less abstract way. transgress the mind stands out the most immediately from battle.

I think you're generally correct in noticing the change. I don't have a perfect mental database of all Magic art, but I do think there's a trend of a card depicting exactly what the card is meant to be or do.

I think that's a bit of a shame, especially on non-creatures (and probably non-artifacts?). Magic (not the game, the supernatural power) doesn't need to bend to your intuitive expectations. Especially since the examples you gave are just as clear as things like [[Outnumber]]. Maybe even more so.

I'm not quite willing to speculate on the "greater meaning behind it all," especially since I'm not an art guy. I am willing to bet it's a conscious decision by Wizards, given how tight they generally manage to keep their visual identity. Which is probably part of the problem. Wizards wants the average player to understand the story and the world just by looking at the cards, occasionally visiting the website maybe, and asking that one Vorthos guy that hangs about in your LGS explaining people why Emrakul should be addressed as "she." (Does that guy even play Magic? You think you might have seen him at a draft once. Or was it a pre-release? He does seem to know the game and it's rumored he has this weird Commander deck that's based around the different nations of Bant, but you've never seen him play.)

In order to do that, each card needs to stick close to the visual identity of a setting. I mean, why do something weird like Terror if you can use that space to solidify the identity of one of your factions or to show one of your characters doing something. I don't really phrase it as "each art needs to pull its weight to tell the story of the block," but I think that's what it comes down to.

By focusing more on telling the story through card art, cards that don't tell the global story fall to the wayside. I'm not certain about this, but I'm willing to bet a small amount of currency that flavor text has more quotes from people that have their own card than there used to be.

Pre-edit: Cards that deal with the mind, meta-magic and illusion seem to get more slack.

Karmic Justice has some pretty surreal art and we roasted it to death.

What chef said that consistency is a death sentence? As the entire food (and any) industry seems to vastly contradict this. I am thinking consistency in that when I go to my favorite restaurant and order my favorite dish I want it to be as close to the other times I have had it as possible. As apposed to consistency in being the same menu and everything on that menu tasting the same as the guy next door which I can see as a problem.

Anyway, back to the topic.

I personally really like things to feel like they belong in the setting and explore the setting. At first I was liking cards that showed a main character doing things. This I realized was more so I liked it when it was a novelty and now that its grown more and more I am not as interested in it. So now I am liking it when cards show the setting and the life of a plane.

The weird cards I think you are still getting, its just that you get a large amount of them. So now that you get 30 cards with tentacle faceless monsters and random floating geometric shapes it starts to feel common. Rather than if you got one card with it then it would seem unique. The first card you mentioned you probably would think it does not fit under your category had it been in Shadowmoore with a scarecrow theme. By simply changing the set it was in it might go from your perfect example to some other boring card that fits your current viewed problem. I agree that the card you mention has some pretty interesting stand alone art, but it also reminds me of scarecrows and creepy doll.

Pantera, keep in mind that I'm not saying "weird" I'm saying "metaphorical." Most if not all the Eldrazi aren't actually all that surreal or abstract. Just, well, weird. I see what you're saying but I don't think it's an illusion brought on by too many Eldrazi. Context is important but not because of sheer numbers; it's important because it provides a baseline that establishes what is likely to be literal and metaphorical.

Did people really drag Karmic Justice? When? Where? When Odyssey first came out?

@Yxoque:

I suspect you're right about decisions on space... Honestly though go too far in that direction and you get Legions or Mirrodin where everything looks VERY similar. That's kind of how I feel about Theros--that block has such a consistent visual identity that it's hard for me to really find anything that stands out.

It does feel a little bit... well... focus tested to me.

@Barinellos:

Ok, I had a VERY strong suspicion that something like that must have happened since I wasn't seeing people describing him as Art Director anymore and since he seemed to be the person pushing for weirder art.

Transgress the Mind is a standout I'd say as something that even if it could be what's literally happening also looks very strange visually and more than that seems like a weirdly literal depiction of the idea of a mental attack, which kind of does the work some of these other cards do but backwards, pairing a concrete art to a very abstract concept with an uncomfortable result.

I feel like Horribly Awry is just good fantasy art? We know the Ulamog Brood turns everything to chalky dust so it's consistent with that idea. It's a very good interpretation of that idea though. Maybe this goes back to the context thing, maybe not... I'm not sure even outside of the context of the Eldrazi I'd look at that as something other than a spell with a somewhat unique effect.

Wherein one person out of a whole thread complains about the art.

Yeah that... that wasn't much of a drag.

You should follow me on Tumblr then you'll see what a good dragging REALLY looks like.

Anyway I'm going through the Tarkir cards for Kyren Auction reasons and I came across Dig Through Time and Anticipate and they both strike me as excellent examples of cards that could have been much more abstract and conceptual but that... aren't. They look much more like the magical version of Tony Stark's hologram computer projections.

I wonder if that's something else influencing this stuff... I mentioned video game aesthetics above and I think that's true of certain artists but I think we could also see this as more Accessible Blockbuster Cinematic

@ me next time keeper please.

It was two posts out of a thread that hade eight posts in it, and another two were either defending the art or complimenting it.

BUT ANYWAY the only point I was trying to make was that maybe the intense consistency of the card art points to the preference of the people who play the game. We really don't represent the general population of mtg players. This forum, a bunch of creative nerds, might like the more abstract art, but the your average garden mtg player might prefer consistency in quality and in a set. It might also point to the fact that mtg has really fully moved to digital artists, which tend to do less abstract stuff.

I mean leaving aside the fact that "maybe this is what most people want" is the least interesting conversation I can imagine having about art in any form...

I don't think there's a correlation between digital art and frodorealism. If anything digital art lends itself quite strongly to surrealist (in the strict sense of the term) methodologies. There's plenty of abstract stuff I can do digitally that's significantly more labor intensive if done by hand.

@pantera: consistency is often the first step towards complacency. You want to be consistent in experience, but never methods. In fine food, the important part is to always strive to innovate. The food service industry, on the other hand, has few chefs and plenty of cooks. Most starred restaurants don't even have the same menu from day to day. That's the key difference of what I'm talking about, the difference between haute cuisine and mass production.

This isn't meant to downplay the skill of someone capable of making great food consistently. Nor, I want to stress, does fine dining have to be constrained by environment or price. Food trucks can do some really bold things that reinvent dishes and reach for a unique experience as well.

@squid: no question we aren't the regular demographic, but most people aren't exactly aware enough to put to words why they might like something. They just don't have the right vocabulary for it.

Of course, maybe that's part of the disconnect I was having with pantera too... One of demographic discussion.

I agree with Keeper (shocking, I know) that the "this is what people want" discussion isn't all that interesting. Keep in Mind that Keeper is approaching Magic as an art-form, which is a fundamentally different discussion from approaching Magic as "just a game."

I'm also not sure if what an audience likes, what an audience wants and what an audience needs are always the same thing. Thinking about big blockbuster movies, I don't think Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3, Mad Max: Fury Road, Captain America 2, Inception, etc. are things an audience realized they wanted. I mean, if you told someone that Iron Man 3 would be mostly about Tony coming to grips with his own mortality, depression and the realization that he can't fix everything alone and that the goddamned suit wouldn't even work for half the movie or that Captain America 2 would be a modern spy thriller they wouldn't have predicted liking it. And yet they are both excellent films for a wide audience. The best movies coming out of Marvel were the ones were they took a little extra risk, trusted their audience and just made a good movie. Once you start focus testing too much, you start losing charm.

And I think that trusting an audience has a lot to do with it. Fury Road trusted the audience to pick up on all the things that weren't explicit. And the audience did.

I'm starting to see a connection with the more realistic cards and a turn away from downside mechanics/cards. I think both have to do with trust. And I think Magic's audience is generally intelligent and clever enough to be entrusted with stuff that's a little bit harder or weirder.

An audience preferences are ultimately not as predictable as people like to think. An audience generally doesn't crave things that don't exist yet. I don't think anyone would have seriously suggested any audience wanted a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton, but the audience is there and they're loving it.

So, in far more words, yxoque reinforces my point: innovation is more important for the long term health of an art than pandering to the broadest audience's wishes.

I agree that some more abstract art would be nice. I'll take the EvT Swords to Plowshares over Gideon's Reproach any day.

Honestly, if they could just stop letting people draw Gideon as if he should be standing in front of the ruins of the statue of liberty opposite Charlton Heston, I'd be a lot happier.
Probably should only let Michael Komarck do his art. He's the only one to get the features right in ages.

The trust thing definitely rings true for me... there's something to be said for aiming any piece of art but games certainly at a place that's a little ahead of where people are at in their understanding. Gameplay challenge can be mirrored with conceptual challenge.

It's interesting, Swords to Plowshares has had some pretty good, abstract art over the years, as has Pacifism, and Terror (say what you will, I really like the original printing's art!), and I think that this might be related to the abstraction of those concepts. I mean I think there's a recognition that just beating a sword into a plowshare, or showing someone not fighting, isn't going to make for an interesting card, so you have to do something a little more conceptual with it.

I remember when Doom Blade replaced Terror I was upset because... well, because Doom Blade is a dumb name, for one thing. But also because it replaced the best art Terror has ever had with an angel being hit by Dark Energy Beams Wooo. It felt much more generic to me.

There's some stand out exceptions but conceptually speaking it feels to me as though a lot of cards are leaning more in the "[color] energy blast" direction, rather than having concepts that lend themselves to a more abstract treatment.

(Though as I noted above, there's several cards from recent blocks that would've been served well with a Theresa Nielsen painting but we got glowy energy instead )

Anything Tiresse Nielson.

I am curious if the following would be a good explanation between the differences of Surrealism (I know this isn't the full term you mean but more of a placeholder or idea) and fantasy?

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091105235533AAEBIyh

If the above link is accurate enough then a problem comes that by being included in the card art it then gains a meaning an reality in the setting.

From my perspective Horribly Awry can stand as either. It is a person who has sand pouring from his mouth. Actually his words turning to sand. To me this could stand alone in being dream like. So that would be if you hung it up by itself with no explanation or maybe if you wanted to give it a social commentary justification. Though it becomes fantasy as it is given a meaning in a fantasy setting.

I have been trying to look up surrealism to get a better idea. From my search I think some of it might be out of place in any current magic setting, but others might fit in. Though I think an Alice In Wonderland setting has been brought up so if that ever comes to be then even more of it would find a setting.

From my perspective I may not like all the art, and I doubt anybody ever will no matter which direction it goes, but I do like that it all builds the setting. I appreciate they are trying to make you think of a certain world when you see a piece of magic art. It makes the game and the world more cohesive rather than the more random feeling of older sets. With that said there is probably one thing I really hate that might be more along the lines of your point. I hate that they changed the slivers to be more relatable, or easier to draw, or whatever other excuse they gave.

It would be an interesting experiment to take some different magic arts and present them to someone who knows nothing about magic or its settings. Maybe someone you would trust their opinion on in art. That way they could give a perspective that is not tainted by the game.