Top Ten: Football-Artist Connections
Andrew Allen
Posted on: 23 May 2011 - 15:18
Football
For decades football has been hailed as ‘the beautiful game’ - a sport unique in its ability to capture the imagination of audiences the world over. Capable of dictating emotion and evoking unrivalled passion, it is at its best enthralling, delightful and utterly engaging.
As Thierry Henry so poetically remarked, “To the aesthete football is an art form, an athletic ballet. To the spiritually inclined it is a religion.”
No wonder then that those inspired individuals who dedicate their lives to scoring, tackling, passing and dribbling have such zealous admirers amongst those who devote themselves to creating works of aesthetic value.
In the week that L.S. Lowry’s The Football Match is set to go under the hammer at Christies, Sport.co.uk casts an eye over ten artists with close associations with football.
L.S. Lowry
One of Britain’s most celebrated painters, Lowry’s much publicised relationship with football-related subject matter will again come to the fore on Thursday 26th May when bidding starts on his 1949 work The Football Match. Valued by Christies between £3.5 million to £4.5 million, the canvas has multiplied in value by more than thirty times since it was sold 19 years ago for £132,000 and looks likely to comprehensively outshine the £1.93 million paid by the PFA for his 1953 canvas Going to the Match. A regular at Manchester City matches, Lowry had an uncanny understanding of the mood of football supporters and the energy of large-scale crowds. Indeed as the art critic and journalist Edwin Mullins states, the scene he depicts in The Football Match, “is full of quirky humour, affection and rich in sentiment...even when his figures are so tiny they are little more than an army of ants. The sentiment is still there – the feeling that this is the heartland of real people.” Quite what Lowry would have made of the scenes of jubilation when City’s multi-millionaire squad ended their 35 year wait for a trophy we must leave to the imagination...
Sir Peter Blake
Last year famed pop artist Peter Blake was hired by sports brand adidas to create a collage for then reigning Premier League champions Chelsea ahead of the launch of the club’s 2010/11 home strip. Most noted for his sleeve design of the Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, Sir Peter spent the summer meeting with Stamford Bridge players past and present in an attempt to get to grips with the rich history of the King’s Road outfit. Incorporating images including that of the £1 note Ken Bates used to buy the club in 1982, old programme covers and former shirt designs the Royal Academician tapped into the spirit of the Blues to create a truly inspiring piece of football memorabilia.
Jannis Kounellis
Painter, installation artist, sculptor and fan of AS Roma, Greek-born Jannis Kounellis was a founding father of the 1960s Arte Povera movement in Rome. Making use of ‘found’ objects and spaces, the Accademi di Belle Arti graduate later became famous for presenting live animals as part of his works with real horses stealing the show in a 1969 exhibition at the galleria l’Attico. A close acquaintance of England manager Fabio Capello, Kounellis remarked recently, “I'm fascinated with how football is woven into the fabric of our society – it's a way to communicate and connect, while many of the social issues of Italy are expressed through football.”
Salvador Dali
The undisputed king of surrealism and one of Barcelona’s most famous residents it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that Salvador Dali was a regular at the Nou Camp (and its forerunners) during his lifetime. Something of a talented player himself as a youngster, the painter could even count amongst his closest childhood friends Josep Samitier and Sagibarba, both of whom went on to have stellar careers with La Blaugrana. Visitors on tours of Barca’s very popular stadium tour will be well acquainted with Dali’s links to the club which are heavily played upon throughout.
Joan Miro
Another famed resident of Barcelona with a passion for football and art, Joan Miro made his name as a surrealist painter, sculptor and ceramicist of the highest order. Born in 1893, six years before the city’s most famous club were founded he lived until 1983 seeing the club win nine La Liga titles in the process. In 1974, to commemorate the club’s 75th anniversary, Miro even designed a poster for his favourite team before joining other famed Catalans in publically celebrating La Blaugrana’s success.
Sam Taylor-Wood
Until 2008 English conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood was arguably best known for making several of Hollywood’s leading men shed tears on camera for her exhibition Crying Men while also hitting the headlines for her video portrait of David Beckham; a commission she fulfilled by filming the England captain fast asleep. She has since moved into filmmaking winning plaudits for Nowhere Boy, her depiction of the childhood of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon. Not necessarily a regular at the Emirates, Taylor-Wood earns Gooner credentials for attending the funeral of Dainton (Denten) ‘the Bear’ Connell – security man for the Pet Shop Boys and one of Arsenal’s most famous fans. Connell, who is credited with preventing the infiltration of the National Front on the terraces of Highbury, was photographed by Taylor-Wood for her 1998 artwork Five Revolutionary Seconds XIII.
Banksy
The world’s most famous graffiti artist and a Bristol City fan to boot. Banksy is thought to be responsible for a stencilled artwork near Ashton Gate which depicts Jesus Christ on the crucifix wearing a Robins shirt above a slogan which reads 'RELIGION.' Known for his controversial statements and mysterious identity Banksy’s iconic image has been taken to heart by City fans who visit Bar BS3, the venue adjacent to which the picture has been painted. A political activist with a satirical side, the artist declared in his book Wall and Piece, “We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.” Whether the proposed collapse of communism ruins Keith Millen’s transfer plans for the summer remains to be seen.
Howard Hodgkin
Turner Prize winning Hodgkin has long been one of Britain’s most respected abstract artists. Born in London in 1932 and influenced heavily by the likes of Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard, his work, though often small in scale, is known to take years to complete. One such example, Clean Sheets, was undertaken in the late seventies and early eighties and was possibly, according to an article in The Independent, influenced by the hulking presence of Liverpool goalkeeper Ray Clemence; a player who kept 335 clean sheets in over 650 appearances for the Reds.
Diego Rivera
Along with his wife Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera remains one of Latin America’s most influential artists 54 years after his death. Consolidating his artistic education during the first two decades of the 20th century in Madrid and Paris, it was his time spent studying the Renaissance frescos of Italy, combined with his fearsome militant Communism, which influenced his large-scale mural making on his return to Mexico City. One such mural can still be viewed today on the east side of the Estadio Olimpico Univisitario which was built in 1952 and is home to Club Universidad Nacional (aka Pumas). Entitled “The University, the Mexican family, peace and youth sports” the relief includes two gigantic figures corresponding to male and female athletes lighting the torch of the Olympic flame, as well as a huge feathered serpent representing pre-Hispanic god Quetzalcoatl. The centre point of the 1968 Olympic Games, the stadium was also graced by the likes of Diego Maradona and Michel Platini when it hosted matches at the 1968 World Cup.
Kazimir Malevich
A leading member of Russia’s avant-garde art scene Kazimir Malevich was the pioneer of the Suprematist movement whose works Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918) earned him international recognition. It was however, Painterly Realism of a Football Player–Colour Masses in the 4th Dimension (1915) which marked the start of his abandoning of all references to the recognizable world and instead focused, “on the inherent relationships of geometric shapes of various colours that seem to float against their white backgrounds.” While referencing the natural world through the title of the work you’d be hard pushed to spot any likeness of Arshavin, Pavlyuchenko and Bilyaletdinov on the canvas, that being said, the gaps between the bold colourful blocks do have the stamp of Arsene Wenger’s defensive tactics. Displayed in public only four times during Malevich’s lifetime, the artist further challenged the accepted norms by hanging the picture in two different orientations.