This is my Fight Post

The Art of Aggression

“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

- Muhammad Ali

I really respect and am inspired by Muhammad Ali, who I’ve quoted above; although I’ve never been a fan of fighting as a sport. The idea of violent confrontation is unnerving to me, and I am taken aback when I see it being promoted and embraced by athletes or anyone with a large public platform. No, Joe (Mazzulla), we don’t need to bring fighting to the NBA!

There was a time when I would get really riled up, and my peers knew it. In fact, when I was on the wrestling team, some of my teammates would jeer me right before a match, knowing that it would send me into this animalistic state. I didn’t stick to wrestling due to a pretty gnarly foot injury and a general loss of interest, but I was honestly a beast when I was competing on the mat.

Sports are a good outlet for releasing tension. While it’s often cathartic, sometimes the emotional release mixed with competitiveness leads to all out brawls. Rules and regulations ensure that athletes don’t get overly aggressive towards one another. Even, and perhaps especially, in combat sports.

Athletics are a means to express aggression in an environment that’s constructed, which ideally makes it a safer space to do so than out in the “real world.” The arts offer similar opportunities to release and exhibit tension and physicality. Of course, accidents do happen. In art, mistakes can be turned into new avenues for creation, but in sports the consequences are more profound, and sometimes can be irreversible.

The Art of Aggression

Matthew Barney’s art is replete with corporeal imagery, and he utilizes sports as a metaphor for societal aggression. Barney was a former high school football quarterback, which made him acutely aware of the game’s risky nature. His film and installation Secondary (2023), is an artistic recreation of an infamously tragic on-field event in 1978, where a player by the name of Darryl Stingley became paralyzed after getting hit insanely hard by his opponent, Jack Tatum. The brutal hit was widely broadcast in the media. When Tatum passed away in 2010, his obituary in the New York Times called him a "symbol of a violent game."

In Secondary performers act out an array of physical elements associated with American football. Barney portrays the bodily impact of the sport through choreographed actions referencing drills and in-game play, as well as the spectacle it has across culture. The concept of violence is complex when it comes to sports like football; it’s celebrated, mythologized, regulated and critiqued.

The forms and movements of the human figure have motivated artists since the very beginning. At its foundation, Barney’s work is a branch of figure drawing. But rather than drawing by observing a live model, he uses his own body actively engaged against forms of resistance as a model.

In the 1940s through the 1960s, action painting, also known as gestural abstraction, was the status quo of modern art in the United States. The style emphasizes the physical act of painting due to artists dripping, splashing and spreading paint onto the canvas with force.

Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 2, 1988. Documentary Photograph. Photograph: Michael Rees.

Barney’s contemporary paintings and drawings (his ongoing “Drawing Restraint” series) expand upon the definition of gestural painting by involving his body in the act of resisting a force, akin to strength training at the gym. Barney uses restraints like harnesses and obstacles to challenge his range of motion, endurance, power and strength. This is the embodiment of his phrase, “the athlete is the artist.” His drawing process undergoes a formidable course that’s similar to how muscles grow through resistance, repetition and volume.

Shaun Leonardo is another former American football player turned artist. I first came across Leonardo’s work at Smack Mellon, an arts space in Brooklyn, New York that organized an exhibition and series of workshops and performances in response to the brutal police brutality killing of Eric Garner in 2014. Leonardo led a participatory self-defense workshop and performance titled I Can’t Breathe (2014). Leonardo showed participants how to break out of a chokehold, the same one that was used by the NYPD (despite it being prohibited) in Garner’s murder.

An earlier work, Bull in the Ring (2008), was enacted with a cast of ten semi-professional football players. The artwork’s title comes from a training routine that is banned from high-school and collegiate levels of American football. The name of the exercise reflects how a matador taunts a bull. One player is positioned within the center of the field, surrounded by a circle of their teammates. This player becomes the matador. The coach spontaneously chooses one of their teammates to charge at them, in an attempt to catch the player at the center off-guard and take them down. The concept behind Leonardo’s reenactment of this violent game, is to represent the pressures that men face in having to prove their masculinity.

Mental Fisticuffs and Fortitude

Nowadays, my fight is against my OCD laden mind. My intrusive thoughts are the heaviest load to bear. They restrain me from living my best life. At the same time, I’ve gained an enormous amount of strength and endurance. I can lift heavy loads, run for miles and perform numerous sets and repetitions of grueling exercises. I like to say that I’m training aggressively to free my mind.

My revolutionary war, fighting for better mental health, was declared the moment I picked up a pair of dumbbells, laced up my running shoes and decided to devote countless hours to building my muscles, range of motion and cardiorespiratory fitness.

I’ve also embraced art and writing as a means of expression and liberation. I do these things for myself as a form of self-care. It’s also been cathartic to share the experiences I’ve had, and show how I respond to mental health issues through various creative outlets.

I fight when I write. 
I fight when I draw. 
I fight when I run.
I fight when I lift. 
I fight without ever throwing a punch.
I fight because I love myself.

---

Thanks for reading Artfully Exercising!

Show me some ❤️

I’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to hit the “heart icon” on this post to show your appreciation (and boost this post within the algorithmic sea that is social media).

Consider subscribing 📩

Artfully Exercising is a reader-supported publication about art and fitness. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber:

Documenting my physical and mental health journey in the form of Artfully Exercising has been a labor of love, which takes a lot of (well spent) time, energy and resources to write the content you receive in your email boxes. If my writing has given you any sort of inspiration and enrichment, please consider making a contribution by becoming a paid subscriber or making a one time contribution.

If you are not ready to become a paid subscriber, you can support my work with a one pledge at a monetary value of your choice:

Let’s continue the conversation 💬

If what I’ve written resonates with you, and/or you want to share your thoughts, please leave me a comment! One of the most rewarding things about writing is getting feedback and making connections with others!