graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: The Times ‘The Game’ 09/06/08
The original newspaper image from which this drawing was transcribed was chosen for displaying a couple of familiar photographic traits, namely that ‘frozen moment in time’, movement & action being arrested, & also the manner in which the image is cropped for maximum effect: the figure diving to the right, in the opposite direction to that in which the ball is travelling, a futile, hopeless gesture, needs not be described in full in order to communicate what the image has to & does, with perfect economy – the punning title ‘Two Feet the Wrong Way’, although perfectly descriptive, was in fact superfluous.
Keen observers may have spotted the presence once again of our old favourite & faithful Modernist grid as the main compositional structure underlying & informing the image, in the form of the goal net, & its making, with the drawing being processed on a cell-by-cell basis.
As ever, I was struck, in the process of making this drawing, just how little football &, indeed, sport in general, seems to feature in a fine art context, as subject matter. As in the case of my earlier ‘Renaissance Men’ drawing & related post, where The Times' art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston drew parallels between the pose assumed, naturally, by a group of footballers acknowledging the scoring of a goal & classic, archetypal compositional methods of historical painting, this might at first seem strange, especially considering the ubiquity of sport, football in particular, in the general contemporary cultural & social landscape, but then, perhaps, photography & the moving image best serve the picturing of sport & the capture of its essential nature, action & drama. Still, sport, especially football, which one associates with being performed in colourful outfits, might because of this be thought to provide suitable scope for artistic endeavour, particularly painting, but this is rarely the case. Racking my brains to think of any suitable images from the history of art, I was sure that Futurism had addressed such omissions & eventually a little light research uncovered one such rare example:
Umberto Boccioni ‘Dynamism of a Soccer Player’
oil/canvas, 1913
Interesting to note that whilst photography captures the frozen moment, at least in the great majority of sporting images, this painting, as Futurism habitually attempted to do, strives to suggest movement, reinforced by its title, which again makes it seem strange that more painting largely failed to follow in its wake, especially when considering the fluidity of a medium such as oil paint.
Michael Browne 'The Art of the Game'
oil/canvas, 1997
Another much more recent example, which yet harks back to a considerably earlier time, tradition & style of painting, is Michael Browne's thought-provoking, challenging Renaissance-idiom portrait of the French former footballer Eric Cantona depicted as, perhaps rather controversially, contentiously, the Christ figure, surrounded by other contemporaneous, recognizable figures from the world of football (in fact, a selection of his then-club team-mates & manager): Cantona was, perhaps, through the force of his idiosyncratic personality - cod-philosophical, self-consciously 'arty' & 'serious', distanced from the normal breed of 'laddish', uncomplicated (English) footballer - & iconic status, a fitting subject for such unusual artistic treatment (& also, perhaps, on occasion a suitable case for treatment!).
Piero della Francesca 'Resurrection' 1463
As can be seen, Michael Browne's representation is based very closely on & refers to Piero della Francesca's 'Resurrection', taking as its template the tight, precise, mathematical composition of the original painting, which sets up an interesting dialogue with, again, Rachel Campbell-Johnston's already referred-to analysis of the photograph from which I transcribed the 'Renaissance Men' drawing.
Leo Fitzmaurice
An interesting body of work, that creatively & skilfully makes use of discarded cardboard packaging & succinctly draws attention to the links between sport & sponsorship - often by purveyors of tobacco-based & alcoholic products - has been produced by Leo Fitzmaurice, who transforms cigarette packets, folded & torn, into models of the football shirts sported (no pun intended) by players &, in replica form, supporters alike: these are exquisite little objects, so convincingly reminding one of the logo-liveried shirts of contemporary football teams, the marriage of corporate identities. Fitzmaurice's cardboard 'shirts' might also be a subtle critical comment on the disposable nature of the replica versions of teams' jerseys, 'must-have' items of high fashion sold to the captive, willing market of supporters at (seemingly) expensive prices & changed in design - often on but the very finest points of detail - on a regular, sometimes annual basis, to be discarded in favour of the purchase of the update, essential to the sense of true 'belonging'.
In terms of football & the broader spectrum of the visual arts, another recent & striking 'collaboration' between the two has been the film directed by Turner Prize-winning artist-film maker Douglas Gordon & Phillipe Parreno, featuring the elegant artistic genius (along with the necessary physical presence & aggression) of arguably the game's greatest then-current player, Zinedine Zidane (another Frenchman, of course), throughout the course of a single match, for his Spanish club Real Madrid versus domestic rivals Villarreal: more a conceptual piece of cinema than 'mere' football documentary, this is arguably the closest coicidence of the game & art yet, located still further in the realm of 'the artistic' courtesy of its accompanying musical score (no pun intended, but an interesting contextual double meaning & coincidence there) being provided by the band Mogwai, who are regarded as inhabiting the more 'avant garde' fringes of their particular artform.
But not a remarkably great deal else: perhaps the subject matter, generally, as perceived, remains too ‘low’ to engage serious artists…it does actually seem to be difficult to reconcile art & sport & the worlds they inhabit & needs they address – the closest I get is listening to the cricket commentary on the radio whilst drawing, but then again, the lack of visuals perhaps lends suitable distance from the cricket to facilitate proper engagement with the drawing, & I also consider cricket, like art - & seemingly being of a more similarly contemplative nature than most other sports - to be a branch of philosophy anyway, thus neatly avoiding any conflict of interests!
The most topical confluence of art & sport probably occurred with the recent ‘Sport Relief’ portraits of various sporting personalities by a selection of artists - not all necessarily of the 'fine' ilk - including Peter Blake (of the boxer Ricky Hatton), Gerald Scarfe (Didier Drogba), Jack Vettriano (Zara Phillips) & Stella Vine (Drogba again & Fabio Cappello): actually, if one considers wrestling to be a sport – rather than, perhaps, entertainment of a pantomimic sort – Blake might be considered to have produced one of the most sustained bodies of sporting art, having long made work based on such subject matter & characters amongst his exploration of popular culture in general as suitable subject matter for the ‘high’ art of painting. Picasso's bullfight images might also be classed within the realm of 'sporting' fine art.
Peter Blake ‘Ricky Hatton’
Soundtrack:
Charlotte Gainsbourg ‘5:55’
Echo & the Bunnymen ‘Ocean Rain’
Cocteau Twins 'Lullabies to Violaine’ vol. 1, ‘Blue Bell Knoll’, ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset ‘The Bairns’
My Bloody Valentine ‘Loveless’
Making various sonic equivalents & crossovers between the latter 3 bands in particular…also, drawing ‘Ocean Rain’ into the fold, considering how perfectly some albums create their own worlds. Whilst the 2 proper Cocteau Twins’ albums seemed somewhat insubstantial on the whole, the collection of EPs from the earlier part of their history to the mid-80s contains much music that endures & sounds, still, like no other, powerful & astonishing. Likewise, little before or since makes quite such a blissful racket as 'Loveless'...peerless.
1 comment:
Interesting find! I enjoyed this article.
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