Fudbalski Heaven

(Re)presenting today a recent addition to the European football print library/archive in the form of the magnificent & essential Yugoslavian ‘Fudbaleri i Timovi’ 1974/75 season sticker album, an original artefact from the season I became properly interested in football & seduced by the glamour & romance of continental teams’ names, imbued with a hauntological aura & redolent with ‘Ostalgie’, acquired via ebay from a seller resident in Belgrade, for just that little bit extra authenticity: this, dear reader, is the very realest of deals.

As can be seen from the images, the album & its contents form an essential visual document(ation) of the protagonists of Yugoslavian domestic football in the mid-1970s: the player pictures are, of course, a period delight, there is also a brief illustrated (with black & white stickers, a nice detail) history of Yugoslavian league football since 1946, the complete roster of first & second division teams are featured in pictorial sticker form, enabling an aesthetic appreciation of their colours, but perhaps the real gold is the inclusion of the grid-format graphs plotting each of the featured teams’ top division progress from post-war to the previous '73-74 season (the vertical y-axis), & the unique line drawings that are thus created as a consequence of joining the small circles that fix the individual seasons’ finishing position from 1 to 18 (along the horizontal x-axis).
Grids & drawing is, of course, living the TOoT modernist dream, at least in terms of historical & enduring concerns, & especially so when applied to a football statistics context.

From the examples below, please feel free to appreciate the jagged elegance of the point-to-point line drawings, from our favourites Velež Mostar, through the particularly striking inconsistent ups & downs of lovely-sounding Vojvodina, to OFK Beograd, whose linear progress can be seen to be interrupted by a season’s absence.

On the subject of football statistics as drawing, art, the stuff & subject matter of creative practice, we return to the example of Marc Renshaw’s continuing ‘Sporting League’ project (who also happens to run another blog on the subject of ‘The Grid’, albeit the search for a particular one), & recent personal considerations of the possibility & viability of doing something along similar lines, having, since 1990, sporadically worked on what now stands at a total of almost 34 full seasons’-worth of an alternative football league (better & much more real, vivid, exciting than the real thing, of course), featuring a combination of English & Welsh league, non-league & invented teams, thus already having a significant store of raw material from which to work & expand – there might be mileage, watch this space…

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Today the opposite of tomato is a bijou flat with the fraternity cat


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

A second drawing, following on from the previous example, taking as its source material photographs from late 60s-early 70s vintage football annuals, again the details of the action appropriated from two separate images, thus creating a match scenario that never actually occurred – not exactly ‘fantasy football’, perhaps, but at least something of an imaginary nature.

Further to this invented aspect (which might be able to be considered as a component of the concept of ‘de-photography’, in addition to that of the process of drawing?), & to the subject of football as a subject for (sustained) artistic practice, the recent discovery of Marc Renshaw’s ‘The Sporting League’ project presents a fine inspirational example. It’s a fully-realised, idiosyncratic body of work developed over a number of years, in effect a whole parallel football universe with its own recognizably familiar (to anyone with an acquaintance with the real thing, however detached from everyday reality that itself might be) culture, teams, league & cup competitions, statistically documented & illustrated, also including a blog that regularly, systematically updates proceedings.

In the most basic manner, this relates in some way to various endeavours of my own over the years since childhood &, most pertinently, what still might be an ongoing one, however dormant it might have lain more recently – I’d never considered my occasional ‘fantasy leagues’ to be in any way art practice (the handwritten archives of results & tables not being thought of as drawings, for example), but perhaps the degree of creativity applied to an alternative world where, although not featuring wholly invented teams in the manner of Marc Renshaw, actual football minnows such as Mossley, Gainsborough Trinity & Marlow are among the leading lights & most-oft champions of the English league structure, & Marlow indeed have become the first English team to have won the European Cup, might lead to something of a reappraisal: perhaps it’s this I should be using the practice of drawing to illustrate & add a simultaneous pictorial dimension to.

In other news, a recent browse in a local Oxfam bookshop unearthed a most interesting find, of a copy of the book ‘You Are an Artist’, a title I recalled also being found in a charity shop some time ago by Jazz Green. In keeping with the period flavour & aesthetic of current proceedings here at TOoT, the book was published in 1965 (reprinted in 1967) & appears very much as a classic of its time: it also seems to be a fine instructional & inspirational volume, lavishly illustrated with ‘masterful’ examples of art across a range of media, as well as those of the author, Fred Gettings, & other contemporaries, & of work produced by students & children, accompanying a serious, substantial text offering sound practical advice & historical context, a quite lovely book indeed.


Part of the reason for investing in the book, its period charm apart, is the fact that its title should serve as a motivational reminder: however, given the slow & unfocussed progress of work over the last year, perhaps a certain critical amendment might be in order & more appropriate…



Soundtrack:


Serge Gainsbourg 'Histoire de Melody Nelson'
Belle & Sebastian 'The Life Pursuit' & 'The Boy With the Arab Strap'

With thanks to A for the present of the wonderful Gainsbourg album set.