{"id":1853,"date":"2015-03-23T21:58:53","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T21:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yumstudio.com.au\/footy\/?p=1853"},"modified":"2015-03-23T21:58:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T21:58:53","slug":"art-is-life-life-is-footy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/footy.yumstudio.com.au\/?p=1853","title":{"rendered":"Art is Life, Life is Footy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"silvani\"<\/a>“if it doesn’t work …(I) take it off the table and stand it against the wall, hovering in front, rather like a slow motion film of an Australian rules football match with a player looking for an opening . . . or deciding how to pass the ball for the best tactical advantage – how to continue with the painting”<\/em>\u00a0~ ^Sidney Nolan on dealing with\u00a0creative blocks.<\/span><\/p>\n

A lot of my art acquaintances, painters mostly, \u00a0take umbrage at a perceived\u00a0predominance of sport in our culture, our media, our funding priorities and our\u00a0attention. Rock musicians seem the\u00a0exception in my experience. Pub rockers and footy go hand in hand like the melted camembert that floats off your dry bikkie\u00a0onto\u00a0your new boots\u00a0while\u00a0you quaff to cough the near to metho Bowler’s run\u00a0on opening night. Flick\u00a0on the replay in stunning HD to\u00a0realise that our guernseys are sun drenched pantone swatches dipped in adrenaline then transcoded to your pleasure centre for viewing\u00a0through one eyed polarising shades.<\/p>\n

How can we reconcile these two worlds whose mutual characteristics include silos of genre, varying degrees of public interest and community management; without the need to pull the pin on a yarn bomb? At the local level, sport has probably been slightly more successful in involving people in roles apart from merely\u00a0“playing” a broader church\u00a0to being simply a ‘patron’ or ‘punter’. Both are united in the struggle for a place in the vision, the chase for that immortal image whether on medium or memory of that one special capture of a moment\u00a0euphoric in depiction and celebration, or critique, of contemplation, victory and defeat.<\/p>\n

\"nolan\"<\/a>For a time art lovers in the pre VFL era some 140 years ago feared the Heidelberg school was to become the Heidelberg club<\/em> when it’s captain Arthur Streeton daubed the “National Game<\/a>” in 1889. Dada, surrealism and cubism intervene as artists move their interests away from the pigskin to intersections of politics, art and the absurdity of urban industrialisation. These are lofty objectives\u00a0for a back pocket player just trying to get a kick after work in the mid winter mud baths that passed for grounds until well into the modern age.<\/p>\n

Of course Footy\u00a0is not\u00a0all a high culture desert. There’s the Carlton theme song for instance. As you journey the AFL retrospective\u00a0the odd tumble weed floats across the road, the biggest probably Sidney Nolan’s “The Footballer”. Depicted on our side of the fence, the footballer preens with us on the field before an anonymous mass behind the pickets and out of our shared “action”. \u00a0Nolan was another Sainter tragic<\/a> who grew up in the shadow of the junction oval and only went off the boil briefly on the “fortius quo fidelius”*\u00a0<\/span>creed when he got hooked\u00a0riding\u00a0the Ned Kelly ferris wheel. You can see the beginnings of that journey in this painting.<\/p>\n

Years later in the 1970’s he’s spotted rightly back in the outer, smearing his facial palette with a sublime neo classical four and twenty smack bang out of the art deco pie warmer hopefully critiquing the brush strokes and movements\u00a0that inform the central umpire’s point of view.<\/p>\n

\"170px-Len_Reynolds_The_Coventrys_of_Collingwood\"<\/a>Caricature has a long history in most sports, from sketching to comedic performance, to parody records to impersonations.<\/p>\n

Football cards begin life tucked inside cigarette packets and pre war were artist impressions and not the later photography bathed in\u00a0Indesign\u00a0epicism.<\/p>\n

Here’s a fine example that goes beyond that fashion from\u00a0Len Reynolds \u00a0and his “The Coventrys of Collingwood” from around\u00a0<\/i>1930.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ethel_Spowers_-_Football,_1936\"<\/a><\/span>Ethel Spowers, superb\u00a0Football<\/i>, a magnificent lino cut from 1936 depicts the twisted anonymous mass of the pack mark superbly through the subtle use of gauche autumnal colours. No record of whom Ethel would die for on a saturday afternoon survives her alas. A PhD there again for someone.<\/p>\n

Even our goal umpires parallel\u00a0the lost world of inner urban world vaudeville<\/a> and early\u00a0television variety\u00a0with their pork pie topped\u00a0nascent\u00a0incessant posing giving way to economic rationalist displays of pure adjudication and american style baseball caps.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Noel Counihan’s “High Mark” supposedly depicts Swan Roy “up there” Cazaly against the Pies on a gloomy saturday afternoon wrapped in that glorious late afternoon Melbourne winter light.<\/p>\n

The symmetry of the players in the air echoes those true fans who marvel in the feats of players of all clubs.<\/p>\n

The ball sits at the uppermost of the painting like a god to which players and fans alike fixate upon. The white picket fence pickets shine as harbingers of well-kept homes and grounds alike demarcating the division between partisan components of the game unified by the search for possession, for victory beyond the reach of the domestic realm.<\/p>\n

\"brack\"<\/a>Even John Brack that delectable chronicler of urban Melbourne despair in the 1950s, of “Collins Street<\/a>” fame (and one of Madame Yum<\/a>‘s favourite artists) came up with this pearler celebrating Collingwood’s 1953\u00a0with his “Three of the Players”<\/p>\n

\"leunig\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Treasure Michael Leunig painted the idiosyncratic watercolour “Kick to Kick” in 1996, the 100th anniversary of the VFL\/AFL.Honouring the time-honoured practice between children of all ages, Leunig celebrates the freedom of only needing some space and a ball. \u00a0The\u00a0game is now yours, anywhere, anytime; and particularly if you’re wearing your guernsey. Even prolific artiste Mick Malthouse recently dispatched another thought-provoking piece from his Princess park studio emotionally evoking Carlton’s chances in 2015 titled simply “It’s very difficult to see where we are going to lose a game”. Pure Cocco Rococo Lossal as the Coco pops monkey<\/a> used to proclaim\u00a0before actors equity pulled the plug on the part time\u00a0cocoa addicted baboon.<\/p>\n

\"Hawthorn-Back-to-Back\"<\/p>\n

\"Hawthorn-Graffiti-2014-Unframed\"<\/a>The Art Of The Game<\/a> was\u00a0only one of two official AFL art producers\u00a0that produced\u00a0\u00a0limited edition AFL, inspired artworks.\u00a0Here is\u00a0their take on last years flag.<\/p>\n

Click on each image for a larger display.<\/p>\n

\"EXHI000926\"<\/a>The National Gallery of Victoria donned a sleeveless exhibition with its spirit of football exhibition back in 2014.<\/p>\n

Enjoy this delectable roman trio from Ross Watson holding Collingwood’s Brodie Holland in a direct reference to the grand final defeats suffered at the hands of Brisbane earlier this century and french eighteenth century master\u00a0Jacques-Louis David.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"2014ARC_Jones.jpg.505x553_q85\"<\/a>Finally footy punched in 2014 through after many attempts to snag an Archibald when portrait of Swan legend Adam Goode held aloft the sacred cup in the same year he occupied the Australian of the year.\u00a0Sort of a two fer portraiture which the civic and sporting Goodes depicted, the later enshrined within the footy badge iconography.<\/p>\n

Sadly Goode’s team was spanked into submission in the grand final of that year in a performance akin to puncturing the canvas of your own game plan with the remnants of your once potent brush.<\/p>\n

\"191px-Waverley_park_mural\"<\/a>So art has made the effort. How can footy reciprocate and open the door to committed creatives? Heres some quick fix ideas the AFL could fast track to bring a more artistic focus into our great game.<\/p>\n