The Artful World of Sports: Football
The theme of sports and athletics is a tried and true muse for artists throughout human history, and I’ve covered this phenomenon often throughout this newsletter.
This edition focuses on the relationship between art and the world’s most popular sport, football. No, not American football (aka gridiron football). I’m referring to the kind that’s more befitting of the name because it’s actually played using feet. We call it “soccer” in the United States, which is apparently a shortened term for "association football."
American football was actually inspired in part by football, but that’s a topic that’s far more extensive than I want to broach, and I’m certainly not an authority on the matter. I’m really a three sport kind of fan (baseball, basketball and tennis), but I’ve enjoyed the limited amounts of football I’ve watched. I also know a bit about the game through my friend, Lizz Brady.
Lizz is an artist from the United Kingdom, where soccer football is basically the law of the land. She is a passionate football enthusiast, who has described herself as a “depressed Everton fan.” I can commiserate on the latter, because Everton has had a similar (albeit much longer) doleful history as my New York Mets.
Lizz is doing incredible things to amplify the experience of disabled artists who are struggling with mental health issues. Her organization, Broken Grey Wires has curated exhibitions, published zines and created workshops and opportunities for artists and communities to visually express their experiences, frustrations and triumphs with regards to mental health.
In addition to running the organization full-time, Lizz also makes and exhibits art that exemplifies dealing with grief, depression and anxiety; as well as intersectional feminism. A recent painting, titled Crossbar Challenge depicts a game where the point is to strike the crossbar of the goalpost as many times as you can. The painting is minimalist in detail and color palette. The brevity of formal aesthetic elements maximizes the painterly expression. I can feel and anticipate the movement of the figure kicking the ball, the whooshing of the ball soaring in the air and the eventual sound of it hitting the crossbar.
The ball’s minimalist treatment and its place towards the top of the painting, suggests that it may also be interpreted as the moon. In either case, the painting strikes me as a metaphor for women’s experiences in sports and culture. The royal blue sky evokes the colors of Lizz’s favorite football club (fans of the club are referred to as the “blues”), but it also signifies a shift in how color is utilized in association with gender.
Lighter hues (white, pink and magenta for example) and pastels (subtle and low saturated colors like lavender, peach, aqua blue and mauve) have been used in an overwhelming majority of historical, modern and contemporary depictions of women throughout popular culture; but by employing a darker and opaque palette, this painting is decidedly more ambiguous in regards to the use of color to signify gender. Authors of the paper, “Blue Is for Boys: Postfeminist Continuations of Gender, Body and Hue in UK Magazines, 2009–2018,” note that, “Colour is employed in the process of assertion or defiance of gendered norms, overflowing the senses and immediately impacting how space is produced and lived across the gender spectrum.”
Another element in the painting is the eschewment of the male gaze, which I described in the prior newsletter (see: “‘Fit Figures’ From the Contorted Mind of R.Crumb”) with regards to R. Crumbs’ drawings of women in sports and culture. In Crossbar Challenge, there’s no idealized representation of the female form. The focus is not on the glorification of corporeal feminine attributes, but rather, a metaphysical exploration into the nature of being a woman in this epoch. This painting is an honest and authentic perspective of women in society who are kicking back against the ubiquitous burden and challenges of male hegemony in all aspects of the culture at large.
While being rife with serious interpretations, Crossbar Challenge is also a fun painting. It compels a Yankee like me to want to get outside and play ball!
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