Art & Sports: usually enemies, sometimes friends | Art 101

I'm Professor Lise (not really a professor) and this is Art 101 (not really a class).

We're here to go on a deep dive of an idea, an artwork or a story from the art world that's controversial, inexplicable or just plain weird.

You know those movies from the '80s,  

where the jock picks on the skinny kid  with glasses — or the other way around,  

where the cool art kids treat the  guy on the hockey team like a goon?

The divide between art and  sports has been vast. So today,  

let's talk about a few examples where  art and sports have been friends.

Matthew Barney is an American artist who's made  epic, feature-length films with massive props.  

A lot of people might call his work dense, but here's a good way of breaking it down. Barney used  

to be a jock — a football player, to be exact.  And he made much of his early work, called Drawing  

Restraint, about the strong connection between  the physical exertion needed for athleticism  

and the creative drive necessary to make an actual  mark, whether it's on a canvas or a bedroom wall.

In all the different versions of this series,  

he attached himself to bungee cords or made  his studio into a rigorous obstacle course,  

making it an incredible physical feat just  to make a single short line on a surface.

Barney was making a comparison  between what it takes to be an artist and what  

it takes to be an athlete. We have this tendency  to see athleticism as disciplined and ordered,  

where art is unrestrained and free. But  Barney was making it clear that both  

are forms of expression that require  control and letting yourself go.

So, that's an example of where an athlete brought his physicality into the art studio, but what about  

art that simply celebrates sports and tries to close the divide between the two worlds?

Thierry Marceau, a performance  artist from Montreal, takes on  

many famous people's personas to try  to give us a look into their world.  

And I'm not talking about an  impersonation — he becomes them,  

performing critical moments from their lives and  taking on critical elements of their personality.

When he did this recently with Wayne Gretzky, he  called up not only what was mesmerizing about the  

young hockey hero, but how his physical genius  invigorated everybody around him, particularly  

Edmonton, the town that grieved his loss to LA  and still celebrates him today. This is art about  

sports, or at least about an athlete, and the  symbolic meaning an athlete can have for a town.

I'm looking at you Kawhi.

For artist Esmaa Mohamoud, sports become a  tool to tell stories of Black identity and they  

also become the core for her art — like in  Glorious Bones, where she uses 46 repurposed  

football helmets covered in an African wax  batik print, calling up both the history  

and sacrifice of Black athletes over generations  of football and the beauty of the sport itself.

In Blood and Tears Instead of Milk and Honey,  

the footballs themselves are stained black and  lie still on black astroturf — like a memorial,  

or a tribute, to the sport that's  meant so much to North Americans.

And in One of the Boys, she incorporates  basketball jerseys into epic swirling gowns,  

calling up the inextricable connection  between fashion and basketball, while  

she points to some of the ideas around gender  that are always part of the history of sport.

Why is there such a divide between the art  studio and the football field? Here's an idea:  

traditionally — and I'm talking ancient Greece  here — sports were an arena to perform gender,  

to build notions of virility and strength.  And maybe art has been more receptive to those  

whose ideas of both gender and physicality  were a little more fluid. Maybe sports,  

which often requires team thinking, has been  seen as a bit at odds with individual thinking.

Each of these disparate practices informs the  other. Athleticism is creative. It requires  

intellect, lateral thinking and incredible mental  patience — just watch tennis finals and you'll  

see that everything from Serena Williams's  outfits to her serve involve a high level  

of intellect and creativity, not to mention an  incredible performance. And art, on its side,  

requires a physicality, patience and drive that  rivals anything that happens during practice.

Who's someone you can think of that brings art  and sport together? Send me a line here at CBC  Arts

and together, perhaps we can stop one kid  from getting pushed into their locker at lunch  

or let another get through the day  without being called a meathead.

See you next time for more Art 101.

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