Daniel Haxall

The world’s most popular sport, soccer has long been celebrated as “the beautiful game” for its artistry and aesthetic appeal. Picturing the Beautiful Game: Essays on Soccer and Visual Culture is the first collection to examine the rich visual culture of soccer, including the fine arts, design, and mass media. Covering a range of topics related to the game’s imagery, this volume investigates the ways soccer has been promoted, commemorated, and contested in visual terms. Throughout various mediums and formats—including illustrated newspapers, modern posters, and contemporary artworks—soccer has come to represent issues relating to identity, politics, and globalization. As the contributors to this collection suggest, these representations of the game reflect society and soccer’s place in our collective imagination. Perspectives from a range of fields including art history, sociology, sport history, and media studies enrich the volume, affording a multifaceted visual history of the beautiful game.

With ongoing debates about racism in sports, African American artists frequently utilize athletic references to contest the fetishism of the black body. This paper examines how contemporary artists engage racial stereotypes of athletic prowess and cultural identity. Utilizing figuration to question the marketing of blackness and challenge our fixation with athletes, the “Post-Black” generation reorients the position of the black sporting icon, both within the arena of sports and culture at large. Moreover, these individuals exploit advertising devices, fan behavior, memorabilia and fashion trends, and societal expectations to interrogate the commodification of the black athlete and historical associations produced by their intersection. From imagery promoting pan-African ideals to art that contradicts generalizations about race and identity, recent works by Rashid Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley will be considered that redress the fetishism of sports and black athletes in contemporary society. For example, Johnson constructs fictional sports collectables for Civil Rights leaders and poses as the “Black Jimmy Connors” to reconsider the rhetoric of Black pride and achievement. Thomas appropriates vintage advertisements or stages faux promotional campaigns to contest the mechanisms of racial exploitation and cultural repression operating within sports marketing. Finally, Wiley creates portraits of star athletes and men wearing “throwback” jerseys in the style of Old Master paintings, reversing the power of representation afforded by fine art. Ultimately, these artists rethink black masculinity in sports and the codes of signification perpetuated through athletic systems of race, class, gender, and commercialism.

In this chapter, Daniel Haxall explores how corporate patronage has changed in the twenty-first century through an analysis of two commissions: Julie Mehretu’s Mural for Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in New York and Kehinde Wiley’s portraits and sportswear designs for PUMA. Both these projects featured public outreach, lifestyle marketing, and inclusivity as strategies for social commitment and brand development, thereby redefining the value of art for private enterprise. One commission was for a singular mural situated within the corporate headquarters of an investment bank, and the other positioned the artist as designer of merchandise and creator of paintingsart celebrating the company’s sportswear. Each corporation, albeit in different ways, hoped the commissions would create a positive brand, one that projected a commitment to social issues and avant-garde art while further presenting each the respective companiesy as diverse and inclusive. In the end, both Mehretu and Wiley potentially critique the nature of multinational capitalism while their commissions remain bound to product sales and corporate reputation and product sales, indicating the challenges and contradictions of patronage in today’s globalized economy.

In 1963 and 1965, the Ghanaian men’s national team won consecutive Africa Cup of Nations, culminating an initiative launched by President Kwame Nkrumah to use soccer to symbolize African independence and achievement. Affectionately known as the “Black Stars,” the Ghana team traveled the world, becoming ambassadors for the newly emergent state as well as pan-African ideals. The sociopolitical significance of soccer in Africa continued well past Nkrumah’s age, as the staging of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and continued success of Ghana’s team signified the end of apartheid and international stature of West Africa respectively. With its prominent position in the nation’s postcolonial history, soccer remains an integral part of Ghana’s culture, particularly in recent artistic practice. This chapter examines four prominent artists from the Ghanaian diaspora and the various ways they represent the sport known as the beautiful game. Godfried Donkor relates fan behavior to religious devotion in a series of faux icons depicting famous internationals as saintly heroes, George Afedzi Hughes equates the proliferation of the English Premier League to colonialism and Western intervention, and Owusu-Ankomah utilizes adinkra symbols to promote nationalism and subvert colonial histories. In diverse ways, the sport of soccer remains central to Ghana’s cultural imagination, maintaining semiotic potency nearly sixty years after the first appearance of the “Black Stars.”

The sport of soccer has long been celebrated as “the beautiful game” to reference its artistry and aesthetic appeal. This visual quality includes the fine arts, with the world’s most popular sport recurring as a subject in art since the nineteenth century. More recently, contemporary artists utilize the game’s iconographic potential to contest the identities projected through soccer, including those of inheritance and citizenry. This essay considers visual representations of soccer and their relationship to nationhood, focusing on England and Germany due to their historical significance and popularity as subjects. While some depict their country’s supremacy on the pitch or primacy as custodians of the sport, others examine the embedment of soccer within the character and rituals of their compatriots. Across diverse mediums, artists portray the socialization of fans, place of collective memory in commemorating footballing success, and cultural traditions usurped and reinforced by soccer. Immigration and globalization often disrupt these narratives, complicating the local character or cultural specificity projected onto soccer. Ultimately, by deconstructing the national assumptions built into soccer and its legacy, today’s artists illustrate the complexities of identity and role of the sport in its formulation.

In 2012, Mexico’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey staged an exhibition, Futbol: Arte y pasión, featuring over seventy artists who represent soccer and its symbolic value. Two years later, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened a comparable show, Fútbol: the Beautiful Game, tracing the game’s significance in the work of over thirty artists. Despite similar curatorial premises, the exhibitions diverged in how they framed soccer and its significance to their respective countries. A close examination of the artists featured in these two shows elucidates the complexities of the soccer rivalry between Mexico and the United States, particularly the sport’s cultural impact. This chapter offers an art historical perspective on the battle for North American footballing supremacy, tracing the competing narratives created by artists from each country. Soccer remains emblematic of the sociopolitical aspirations of both nations, and in unique ways, artists have projected and contested their nationhood through soccer, utilizing the game as a loaded metaphor for patriotism, immigration, and identity. While some directly represent the rivalry, others clarify the deep meanings attached to soccer and competition between Mexico and the United States.

The centrality of soccer to Mexican identity has been asserted by many, with the curators of Futbol: Arte y passion declaring, “contemporary Mexico has three great phenomena: The Virgin of Guadalupe, drug trafficking and soccer.” Indeed, a diverse group of artists represent the game as an intrinsic part of their culture. Through painted soccer balls, Dr. Lakra combines several Mexican cultural traditions—soccer, the graphic arts, tattooing, the Day of the Dead holiday—to localize futbol with a distinct aesthetic. Likewise, printmaker Dewey Tafoya recalls the Mesoamerican origins of ball games like soccer, suggesting the continuity and significance of sport as a sociocultural spectacle. The football pitch recurs throughout Pablo Lopez Luz’s photographic “portrait” of the Mexican landscape, revealing the transformation of urban and natural spaces into sites of play and competition. The place of soccer in our mass consciousness extends beyond the ubiquity of soccer fields in Mexico, as Jonathan Hernandez utilizes newspaper clippings for collages about the game’s popularity, media saturation, and political agency. The nationalistic potential of futbol surfaces frequently in Mexican contemporary art, with Miguel Calderon creating a television broadcast of a fictional match where his home country defeats Brazil by an implausible scoreline. By airing this montage in São Paulo, Calderon challenges the pride Brazilians maintain in their country as well as his own fantasies about Mexican supremacy. His compatriot Gustavo Artigas explored the link between sports and national identity, staging a competition by basketball and soccer teams on the same court at the same time. That the basketball team came from San Diego and the soccer team was from Tijuana suggested how American and Mexican identities are associated with particular sports, and by synchronizing their contests, he demonstrates the fluidity of national identity and complications of immigration in these border towns.

Where many Mexican artists link soccer to local and national identities, several Americans further associate the game with Latin American demographics, particularly within the context of immigration. Mark Bradford connects the sport to class stratification, utilizing soccer balls as emblems of immigrant culture and the persistence of local allegiances. By casting balls in bronze, Jeff Koons plays with advancements in sports technology but also the ways in which athletics affords social mobility. Conversely, Michael Ray Charles transforms the black panels of a ball into caricatures of racial minstrelsy, drawing awareness to the pervasive discrimination that mars the sport. The global implications of soccer motivated Julie Mehretu to trace human history through sport in her painted triptych Stadia. Suggesting that gatherings to contest football have replaced religion in the public consciousness, she represents the spectacle of such displays of nationalism and illustrates how athletics and stadia structure our social and political lives. Greg Colson’s recreation of the solar system furthers this idea, particularly with a soccer ball assuming the central position of the sun, around which other sports orbit.

While these examples suggest the symbolic potency of the sport within each nation, Michael Shultis directly represented the footballing rivalry between Mexico and the United States. In his mixed media installation, The Flop (2014), consumer advertisements represent America’s global influence while a soccer goal morphs into a barbed wire fence reminiscent of those constructed to prevent illegal immigration. The connotations of this match are overt, particularly as one in a series of artworks depicting fictional matches between the United States and their global adversaries, including China and Iraq. As such, Shultis links patriotism and capitalist imperialism to America’s long quest for footballing relevance.  As these examples suggest, today’s artists employ the iconographic potential of soccer to critically reflect upon national identity and its ramifications. A major vessel for nationhood, soccer enables Mexican and American artists to revisit their contentious past and assert cultural distinction in an age of globalization.

This summer, an international committee of over seventy journalists and former players named “the best eleven players of all time” for World Soccer magazine. Zinedine Zidane was selected for a midfield consisting of legends Alfredo di Stefano, Johann Cruyff, and Diego Maradona, indicative of the respect he earned in leading France to the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship titles, as well as the stunning goal he scored for Real Madrid in the 2002 UEFA Champions League final. Revered as a symbol of a racially integrated France due to his Algerian heritage, he has been celebrated as a diplomat, “good Muslim,” and inspiration to the inhabitants of the banlieues. Yet no discussion of Zidane is complete without mentioning the penultimate match of his career, the 2006 World Cup final in which he was ejected for head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi. Thus, a player who dazzled the world with his footballing brilliance became immortalized through an act of violence. Considering the global popularity of soccer and Zidane’s international reputation, it should not be surprising that “Zizou” appears as a frequent subject in contemporary art. However representations of Zidane extend beyond fan eulogies; instead they offer critical reflections about fame and publicity, gender norms and social taboos, the commodification of athletes, and the politics of sport.

Perhaps the best-known artwork to focus on Zidane is Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s film, Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait. With seventeen cameras following only the midfielder while he played a match for Real Madrid, the film challenges standard modes of spectatorship while offering a compelling revision of the genre of portraiture. In a similar way, Lyle Ashton Harris’ collaged installations center around a photograph of Zidane receiving a massage that appeared in an Adidas advertisement. He juxtaposed this image with his other representations of Zidane and soccer—including a photojournalistic essay on Italian ultras—to reconsider class, codes of masculinity, and fan behavior. Mexican artist Rodolfo de Florencia explores the commodification of soccer players by framing Zidane’s record-breaking transfer from Juventus to Real Madrid within the language of fetishism. Malian photographer Mohamed Camara evokes nostalgia and escapism while considering Zidane’s significance in Africa, an aspect of the midfielder several African artists have addressed. For example, Hassan Musa based a textile work and several prints on a painting of Jacob Wrestling the Angel, with Zidane assuming the posture of Jacob to symbolize colonial politics, resistance, and heroism. Where Musa views Zidane’s infamous head-butt as an anti-colonial gesture, Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed’s monumental homage to Zizou lays bare the aggressive masculinity that often dominates sports while acknowledging the fallibility of today’s athletes. In fact, this sculpture recently was removed from public display in Qatar because of its implications, indicating the social and political significance of such art. Zidane, then, becomes an icon of sporting success, colonization and its discontents, ethnicity and the fetishized male body; a complex set of associations for a player renowned for excellence and failure on the pitch.

In the past decade, many sports historians made the “visual turn” and embraced the diverse visual culture of athletic spectatorship and consumption, however art historians have been somewhat reluctant to make the corresponding “sporting turn.” This paper assumes a unique position by investigating the central role mass sport, particularly football, plays in fine art, a field typically perceived as high culture. A closer examination of the African diaspora indicates soccer’s prominence within recent artistic practice. Many successful, professional artists utilize the game to contest politics and nationalism, social norms and human behavior, and codes of gender and class. By focusing on representations of the ball, star players, fan perspectives, and stadium experiences, this essay explores artists’ use of soccer for critical reflections on contemporary life.

In 1949, John Cage was invited to speak at the Artists Club in New York City, an interdisciplinary arts project led by Robert Motherwell that would become a driving force behind Abstract Expressionism. The composer responded with his infamous “Lecture on Nothing,” a presentation featuring lengthy pauses that asserted the value of silence and nothingness. For many scholars, Cage’s performance challenged the doctrines of the New York School by replacing the artist’s ego with nothing. Considering this antithetical stance towards Abstract Expressionism, it seems curious that Robert Motherwell honored Cage with his collage, Blue with China Ink: Homage to John Cage (1946, Yale University Art Gallery). Art historians typically emphasize Cage’s later relationship with Robert Rauschenberg and subsequent rejection of Motherwell’s masculine subjectivity, establishing the two of adversaries because of divergent aesthetic and philosophical positions. Yet this notion overlooks the close relationship Motherwell and Cage maintained during their formative years. They traveled in many of the same circles, frequenting the Cedar Bar, teaching at Black Mountain College, and participating in the “Subjects of the Artist” school in New York. Motherwell selected Cage to be music editor of Possibilities, and although only one issue of the journal was published, their collaboration fostered a dynamic exchange of ideas. This paper retraces this understudied friendship, examining their shared interests and aesthetic congruities, particularly Cage’s impact on Motherwell’s emergent artistic philosophies.

Blue with China Ink sheds light on the relationship between Motherwell and Cage by celebrating shared interests that ranged from Zen Buddhism and Mallarméan poetics to aleatory operations and paratactic compositional structures. Collage proved an appropriate means for Motherwell’s tribute because both men have been considered pioneers of the medium. Each predicated their work upon chance, relativism, and the quotidian, stressing the experiential, juxtaposing indeterminacy with order, and testing the capacities of their respective media. Even their collaboration on the journal Possibilities employed the appropriative tactics of collage, as the co-editors randomly compiled disparate sources for their anthology. Although Motherwell and Cage would go in separate directions, Blue with China Ink remains a record of the brief period when they shared in a collage ethos centered upon common experience.

Yet this collage also chronicles Motherwell’s misreading of Cage’s artistic intentions, and the two had a falling out just a few years after the composition was completed. It seems that Motherwell’s abstract tribute was based on the person he hoped Cage would be: a Dadaist composer aligned with Motherwell’s ideals of modernism. Thus, a comparison of their work at this time reveals what brought them together, while anticipating how their art and music would diverge. The similarities and differences in their aesthetic approaches also expose how Motherwell misinterpreted Cage and why he considered the iconoclastic musician a kindred spirit in the first place. Ultimately, Blue with China Ink affords an opportunity to rethink Motherwell and Cage’s relationship as well as the formative years of Abstract Expressionism.

In 1953, Lee Krasner began making collages by tearing up and rearranging works executed by her and her husband, Jackson Pollock. Ellen Landau has interpreted these collages as an attempt to “possess” Pollock, Krasner’s symbolic means of connecting with her husband while validating herself as an artist.  Noting the expressivity of these compositions, Landau has associated the contingency of collage with Krasner’s struggle to overcome personal pain and professional failure. Bryan Robertson, however, has written that Krasner’s work “has always seemed… pastoral and bucolic but with highly personal inflections.”  While Robertson employed the word “pastoral” to refer to Krasner’s “preoccupation with nature,” his review indicates a far different assessment of Krasner’s oeuvre than Landau. How, then, do we reconcile such varied interpretations of Lee Krasner and her work?

By considering Krasner’s collages within the context of the pastoral, a new interpretation of her work is achieved. A pastoral perspective elucidates the formal and symbolic complexity of her collages, while synthesizing the diverse body of literature on the artist. The pastoral has traditionally defined a type of poetry concerned with the activity of shepherds, including leisure, animal husbandry, and lyric competition. However, since the modern era, critics have employed certain aspects of the pastoral, such as its oppositional strategy or emphasis on repose, to bestow new meanings upon this formerly archaic term. As such, the pastoral has been reinterpreted by critics like William Empson and Thomas Crow to examine the unique properties of the genre.  Some, like Crow, attribute the importance of the pastoral to its focus on modesty and simple means. Others, notably David Halperin, find significance within the oppositions highlighted by the pastoral, such as the contrast between the simple and complex, or urban and rural.  The pastoral was a term used frequently by the New York School, as many artists alluded to its traditions either in mood or title, and Clement Greenberg argued that “avant-garde pastoral art… revealed the most permanent features of our society’s crisis.”

By situating Krasner within the context of the pastoral, my paper employs a new framework to deconstruct her iconography, methods, and subject matter. Krasner’s pastoral vision ranged from the literal to the metaphoric, as she escaped to Long Island and found solace within her pieced-together compositions. Emphasizing materiality, revision, and contrast, I examine the ways in which Krasner’s collages met the pastoral criteria set forth by Crow, Halperin, and others. I also suggest that her desire for the simple life, and evocations of nature, established a mood akin to Virgilian shepherds. At the heart of Krasner’s pastoralism is collage, a medium based upon order and relativism. The act of arranging collage elements became a pastoral endeavor unto itself, Krasner’s pursuit of psychological and compositional order.

The Marlin and Regina Miller Gallery at Kutztown University proudly presents, Figures and Projections: Selections from the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African-American Art (October 28 – December 12, 2021). Co-curated by Art History professor Daniel Haxall, Gallery Director Karen Stanford, and students from Kutztown University, Figures and Projections includes more than 40 works in collage, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and diverse print mediums. This exhibition explores how African American artists portray the human form to represent the Black experience in America. In this way, the word “figure” refers to the body, particularly the presence of the African American as both subject matter and subjectivity. Romare Bearden called the photographic enlargement of his paper collages, “projections,” a word that literally described his artistic process but one that also denotes an outlook, conception of reality, or transfer of desires. From formal portraits and images of everyday life to abstracted suggestions of bodies in motion, these works project the beauty, aspirations, and achievements of African Americans while commemorating ongoing efforts for equality and social justice.

In 1974, James Carroll, a professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Kutztown University, founded a unique visiting artist series called the New Arts Program. For over four decades, hundreds of artists, choreographers, musicians, and writers have traveled to Kutztown to meet with students and the public. The list of residents is staggering for their diversity and historical significance, comprising a veritable “who’s who” of the avant-garde: Richard Serra, Vito Acconci, John Cage, Philip Glass, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, and so many others.

As Kutztown University celebrates its sesquicentennial, the Marlin and Regina Miller Art Gallery is pleased to tell the story of the New Arts Program and recognize James Carroll for four decades of service to the arts community. In addition to enriching the area with pertinent contemporary art programming, Carroll helped cement the university’s reputation for excellence in the arts. His initiative inspired countless students while establishing a climate for experimentation and critical discourse. This exhibition features the man who created the New Arts Program, the students who benefited from its realization, and those who have sustained it through their participation and fundraising efforts. These six artists—James Carroll and Kutztown University alumni James Clark, Joseph Egan, Paul Harryn, Michael Kessler, and Barbara Kilpatrick—represent paradigm shifts within art and education that were initiated by Carroll and the New Arts Program.

This exhibition features artists from throughout the United States and the African diaspora who have brokered new technologies and approaches to printmaking while addressing issues pertaining to history, identity, and politics. In works ranging from the representational to the abstract, this diverse group of women has enriched the print medium with their brilliantly drafted lithographs, colorful etchings and silk-screens, and conceptually rich photographs. Nearly twenty artists from the Civil Rights Era to present day areincluded in the show: Ghada Amer, Emma Amos, Mary Lee Bendolph, Louisiana P. Bendolph, Chakaia Booker, Elizabeth Catlett, Robin Holder, Margo Humphrey, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Odutola, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Faith Ringgold, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis. The exhibition is co-curated by Allentown Art Museum president and CEO David Mickenberg and Dr. Daniel Haxall, Associate Professor of Art History at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup was an unprecedented success, attracting record crowds and television audiences. Yet despite the increased popularity of women’s soccer, the tournament reinforced gender inequity with controversies surrounding the compensation of women and the staging of matches on artificial turf. Such issues are hardly new as the soccer pitch has long been a contested site, a public space where various identities can be performed and projected. While many scholars research the sociopolitical implications of soccer in regards to nationalism, ethnicity, or political ideology, this paper examines visual representations of soccer, specifically those that question gender and sexuality. Through art historical analysis, the image of the footballer will be considered as a critical tool employed by artists to construct, and deconstruct, heteronormativity. While some artists celebrated the thriving women’s game prior to its banishment in Western Europe in the 1920s, subsequent generations of artists depicted soccer in strictly masculine terms. More recently, however, contemporary artists have recast the sport, parodying codes of machismo within English football, critiquing associations generated by sportswear, challenging assumptions about fans and athletes, and chronicling the lives of women in soccer. Artworks by Sarah Lucas, Karen Shaw, Wendy White, Nina Erfle, and Katrin Ströbel will be explored as critical commentaries, not only on soccer, but also the visual languages that frame athletic performance and social dynamics. In diverse ways, these artists contest identity politics through soccer, articulating the symbolic potency of sport and its consequences for gender and sexuality.

Historically, sport and art have been categorized as separate forms of leisure, with athletic competition appealing to the masses through physicality and spectacle, and art positioned within the intellectual culture of the elite. Despite this division, sport features throughout the history of art, ranging from Classical, Renaissance, and Pre-Columbian representations of games to portraits of star athletes by Andy Warhol and Kehinde Wiley. This panel reconsiders the relationship between sport and art, with topics that might include: exhibitions that coincide with major sporting events such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup; representations of athletes and the role of portraiture in sporting narratives; the use of sport as a metaphor for sociopolitical issues relating to gender, race, class, colonialism or globalization; commissions for monuments, artworks or designs, with athletic clubs or sportswear companies serving as patron; stadiums as sites of civic identity; depictions of sport as emblems of modernism, court life or ritual in diverse geographic regions or historic eras; the camera and its relationship to sport, whether documentary or video; and museums and exhibitions of sport, including the role of visual objects in constructing collective memory.

Art and Sport
Chair: Daniel Haxall | Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

Bridget Sandhoff | University of Nebraska Omaha
Etruscan Jocks and Amazons: Sport in Ancient Etruria

Jeffrey O. Segrave | Skidmore College
Pietro Metastasio and the Survival of the Olympic Games

Erin Lehman | Towson University
Gustave Caillebotte: Painter as Athlete, Athlete as Painter

John Paul | Washburn University
Power and Protest: Activism in Art and Athletics

Nathanael Roesch | Bryn Mawr College
The Fine Art of Sports Spectatorship

The sport of soccer has long been celebrated as “the beautiful game,” a reference to its artistry and aesthetic appeal. Indeed, the rich culture surrounding soccer includes tifos, kit designs and the style of play itself. This visual quality also includes the fine arts, with the world’s most popular sport recurring as a subject in art since the nineteenth century. More recently, contemporary artists have utilized the game’s iconographic potential to contest the globalizing impact of soccer, ranging from international marketing and economic imperialism to the loss of cultural traditions. Where some challenge the sport’s homogenizing effect and commercial excess, others depict the local allegiances and regional identities fostered by the game. As such, today’s artists elucidate, in visual terms, the complexities and limitations of mass sport, namely soccer’s consequences for culture and society.

The vast popularity of soccer renders it a powerful trope for engaging the politics of globalization. In portraits of soccer stars commissioned by PUMA, African-American painter Kehinde Wiley juxtaposes traditional African design with politically historicized representations of the African body. Likewise, Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj and the Czech group Pode-Bal juxtapose the logos of sportswear manufacturers Nike and Adidas with burkas and other attire evocative of Islamic and Arab cultures, representing the intersection of consumption and tradition that occurs via soccer and its branded empires. The global impact of football, particularly the exploitation of Africa for consumers and athletes, recurs in the installations of Romauld Hazoumè from Benin, while Ghanaian George Afedzi Hughes equates the proliferation of the English Premier League to colonialism and Western intervention. The financial implications of soccer’s global reach extends into the political realm, with Michael Shultis creating fictional matches between his native United States and their rivals China, Iraq, and Mexico, questioning America’s immigration policies, capitalist imperialism, and footballing aspirations in the process.

This summer’s European soccer championship (UEFA EURO) allows us to reconsider the role of sport in constructing national identity. While the formation of the European Union brokered varying degrees of collectivism in terms of economics, mobility, and politics, competitions such as the EURO offer outlets for patriotic display and partisan divide. Many artists depict this aspect of soccer, rendering the game emblematic of communal pride and jingoism. While some depict their country’s supremacy on the pitch or primacy as custodians of the sport, others examine the embedment of soccer within the psyche and rituals of their compatriots. This paper will augment the “European identity and sport” session by featuring an art historical analysis of images that contest national identity through soccer. Examples by a range of European artists will be discussed for the diverse ways they engage the socialization of the body politic as citizens and fans of sport, the place of collective memory in commemorating footballing success, and the cultural traditions usurped and reinforced by soccer in contemporary life. Such works evince nationalistic perspectives and, when compared to similar art from the African diaspora, elucidate major differences in how European artists construct identity through sport. Where many African artists promote continental unity and pan-African ideals, Europeans often portray a regional tribalism at odds with the notion of a European Union. Ultimately, contemporary artists articulate the visual rhetoric of nationalism and role of soccer in shaping local allegiance.

Despite being hailed as the “beautiful game,” the sport of soccer has long been plagued by violence, ranging from clashes between fans to combative athletes on the pitch. While the topic has received attention from sociologists and sport historians, this paper offers a unique perspective by examining the ways artists represent soccer and its capacity for violence. As the world’s most popular sport, soccer appears as a frequent subject throughout art history, and artists often employ the game to symbolize a range of social and political issues, including soccer’s volatile potency. By considering the international contemporary scene, this study explores the charged emotional and physical climates surrounding mass sport, focusing on the unique fervor associated with soccer.

Many artists utilize photography and video to document the behavior of soccer fans at stadiums, including the orchestrated violence of ultras as they fight riot police or harass other spectators. In paintings and installations, some explore the political agendas projected into, and interfering with, the game, while others represent the aggressive physicality that often boils over on the field. Finally, artists question soccer’s unique history with war, ranging from the militaristic metaphors used to describe the sport to its role as a pacifying agent of leisure in times of conflict. These representations of soccer challenge our assumptions about the “beautiful game,” and this paper elucidates the diverse ways violence in the sport has been imagined, promoted, and contested in visual terms.

From Mesoamerican ball games to twice hosting the FIFA World Cup, variations of soccer have been played in Mexico for centuries. The rich history of the sport includes the visual arts, with Mexican artists utilizing soccer as a complex symbolic trope. Where some depict the spectacle of competition, representing the history of soccer, its aesthetics, fan behavior, and athletes on the pitch; others question social norms and political systems, employing the game to critically address the commodification of athletes, nationalism and colonial legacies, immigration, class and gender. In diverse ways, Mexican artists rethink soccer and its position in society, portraying fútbol in a range of mediums and formats. Prominent contemporary figures, including Gabriel Orozco and Miguel Calderon to Gustavo Artigas and Roberto Cardenas, will be considered for the manner in which they engage the sport of soccer and challenge our assumptions about “the beautiful game.”

In this lecture, Dr. Daniel Haxall will discuss the exhibition, “Interventions in Printmaking: Three Generations of African-American Women.” For the past fifty years, African-American women have employed various print media to address issues pertaining to history, identity, and politics. In works that range from the representational to the abstract, these artists create brilliantly drafted lithographs, colorful etchings and silk-screens, and conceptually rich photographs. Haxall will discuss this rich history, contextualizing the prints of these women within their careers and artistic interests.

In 1960, Nigerian artist Uche Okeke called for a humanist art blending old and new, traditional and modern, and functional and aesthetic. Okeke and his peers called this concept “natural synthesis,” a fusion of Western and indigenous practices that dismantled academic hierarchies within the arts. As Dr. Daniel Haxall notes in this presentation, the ideals of “natural synthesis” might be considered alive and well in contemporary times, with the distinction between fine arts and crafts immaterial in our current postmodern and globalized world. In particular, Haxall will addresses the rich legacy of textiles in the African diaspora, ranging from artists who reference their color, pattern, and symbolism in paintings, recreate ritualistic cloth with unconventional materials, or utilize fabric for installations and photographic backdrops. These examples will allow educators to introduce students to prominent artists working today as well as design lesson plans inspired by their interdisciplinary practice.

In this lecture, Dr. Daniel Haxall will discuss the art of Robert Indiana in the context of Pop Art and American history, noting the various ways Indiana engaged social and political issues with his unique blend of word play and typography. From the iconic “LOVE” series to his recent works focusing on “HOPE,” Indiana traced the power of simple yet ambiguous words, utilizing the style of advertising to explore identity, language, and meaning in contemporary life.

In this lecture, Dr. Daniel Haxall will trace the development of collage in American art during the twentieth century. From early practitioners of modernist assemblage such as Arthur Dove to the celebrated montages of Romare Bearden, collage emerged as a medium rich with interpretive and formal possibilities. Significant exhibitions of collage will be discussed including several landmark shows that introduced American artists to the work of Picasso, Schwitters, and the European avant-garde, and lead directly to America’s “pasted-paper revolution” at mid-century. Abstract Expressionists including Robert Motherwell, Esteban Vicente, and Anne Ryan repositioned the medium within histories of painting and the decoupage of Matisse, whereas Bearden, Robert Rauschenberg, and others utilized photographic imagery in a manner inspired by Dada montage. Dr. Haxall will outline these different trends and approaches to collage, noting the medium’s influence on our contemporary cut-and-paste world.

Modern? Postmodern? Contemporary? Confused about the difference? In this lecture, Daniel Haxall will investigate the various ways contemporary art is defined, particularly in the United States. He will introduce the major trends and themes of today’s art world, ranging from historical and theoretical perspectives to spaces of production and exhibition.

This summer, an international committee of over seventy journalists and former players named “the best eleven players of all time” for World Soccer magazine. Zinedine Zidane was selected for a midfield consisting of legends Alfredo di Stefano, Johann Cruyff, and Diego Maradona, indicative of the respect he earned in leading France to the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship titles, as well as the stunning goal he scored for Real Madrid in the 2002 UEFA Champions League final. Revered as a symbol of a racially integrated France due to his Algerian heritage, he has been celebrated as a diplomat, “good Muslim,” and inspiration to the inhabitants of the banlieues. Yet no discussion of Zidane is complete without mentioning the penultimate match of his career, the 2006 World Cup final in which he was ejected for head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi. Thus, a player who dazzled the world with his footballing brilliance became immortalized through an act of violence. Considering the global popularity of soccer and Zidane’s international reputation, it should not be surprising that “Zizou” appears as a frequent subject in contemporary art. However representations of Zidane extend beyond fan eulogies; instead they offer critical reflections about fame and publicity, gender norms and social taboos, the commodification of athletes, and the politics of sport.

Perhaps the best-known artwork to focus on Zidane is Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s film, Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait. With seventeen cameras following only the midfielder while he played a match for Real Madrid, the film challenges standard modes of spectatorship while offering a compelling revision of the genre of portraiture. In a similar way, Lyle Ashton Harris’ collaged installations center around a photograph of Zidane receiving a massage that appeared in an Adidas advertisement. He juxtaposed this image with his other representations of Zidane and soccer—including a photojournalistic essay on Italian ultras—to reconsider class, codes of masculinity, and fan behavior. Mexican artist Rodolfo de Florencia explores the commodification of soccer players by framing Zidane’s record-breaking transfer from Juventus to Real Madrid within the language of fetishism. Malian photographer Mohamed Camara evokes nostalgia and escapism while considering Zidane’s significance in Africa, an aspect of the midfielder several African artists have addressed. For example, Hassan Musa based a textile work and several prints on a painting of Jacob Wrestling the Angel, with Zidane assuming the posture of Jacob to symbolize colonial politics, resistance, and heroism. Where Musa views Zidane’s infamous head-butt as an anti-colonial gesture, Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed’s monumental homage to Zizou lays bare the aggressive masculinity that often dominates sports while acknowledging the fallibility of today’s athletes. In fact, this sculpture recently was removed from public display in Qatar because of its implications, indicating the social and political significance of such art. Zidane, then, becomes an icon of sporting success, colonization and its discontents, ethnicity and the fetishized male body; a complex set of associations for a player renowned for excellence and failure on the pitch.

With ongoing debates about racism in sports, African American artists frequently utilize athletic references to contest the fetishism of the black body. This paper examines how contemporary artists engage racial stereotypes of athletic prowess and cultural identity. Utilizing figuration to question the marketing of blackness and challenge our fixation with athletes, the “post-black” generation reorients the position of the black sporting icon, both within the arena of sports and culture at large. Moreover, these individuals exploit advertising devices, fan behavior, memorabilia and fashion trends, and societal expectations to interrogate the commodification of the black athlete and historical associations produced by their intersection. From imagery promoting pan-African ideals to art that contradicts generalizations about race and identity, recent works by Rashid Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley will be considered that redress the fetishism of sports and black athletes in contemporary society.

"In 1997, Kehinde Wiley made his first trip to Africa to meet his father, a Nigerian man Wiley would not know until adulthood. This journey resonated deeply with the artist, who subsequently returned to his ancestral home on several occasions. Each time, he documented his travels through portraiture, first painting his father and, later, local youths for his World Stage series of 2008. He revisited African subjects a third time when sportswear manufacturer PUMA commissioned him to create portraits of African soccer stars for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the first time the event was staged on African soil. This paper traces the impact these experiences had on the art of Kehinde Wiley, in particular his aesthetic sensibility and conceptual mindset. Wiley embraced the art of
Africa throughout his career, appropriating poses from sculpture and incorporating colors and patterns from textiles into elaborate backgrounds. He applied these sources to clothing designs as well, producing a line of t-shirts, soccer cleats, and other attire for PUMA that relied heavily on African decorative arts.

However, Wiley’s response to Africa extended beyond formal considerations. In the spirit of Négritude, he mined a collective African identity to contest former colonial hegemonies, critiquing the representation of race, status, and power in the process. Akin to the pan-African advocates of the twentieth century, the artist employed a realist style and located a shared heritage among the African diaspora. Much like the literary movements of the 1930s that attempted to reimagine notions of “blackness,” Wiley reclaimed the African subject in portraits that reference traditional, colonial, and contemporary histories. For example, he based one painting (On Top of the World, 2008) on a public monument to Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, considered one of Nigeria’s founding fathers for his role in delivering Nigeria from foreign rule. Similarly, Wiley depicted three youths as Yoruba wise men, and borrowed from Senegalese nationalist statuary and genre images native to Benin and Mali in the World Stage paintings. Patterned backdrops derive from textiles purchased in African markets, and one (Dogon Couple, 2008) resembles the sankofa symbol, an image of a bird turning its head backwards that appears frequently in West Africa to express the importance of learning from the past. The monumental painting Unity (2010), a portrait of three soccer players, most clearly articulates pan-African ideals. Athletes from different countries interlock arms and wear the same jersey, a symbol of African solidarity while facing international competition at the World Cup. The multi-layered iconographic scheme reflects Wiley’s stated belief that “unity does exist in Africa… there is a type of unity that goes beyond nation, that goes beyond tribe.” In this way, the artist revives the aesthetics and strategies of Négritude, amending “blackness” by assimilating traditional African forms with Western cultural practice. Ultimately, Kehinde Wiley’s dialogue with Africa complicates identity and representation, repositioning the African subject within the history of art to challenge the normalizing power of figuration."

In 2010, the FIFA World Cup was staged on African soil for the first time, a historic event that confirmed the popularity of football in Africa. It should not be surprising then, that soccer appears regularly in art of the African diaspora. Like fans occupying a football pitch to celebrate victory or protest injustice, contemporary diasporic artists appropriate soccer to contest gender, class, and colonialism. For example, Kehinde Wiley juxtaposes traditional African design with politically historicized representations of the African body in portraits commissioned by PUMA; Lyle Ashton Harris documents crowds at football matches, chronicling codes of masculinity displayed by fans, players, and security guards, while his photomontages conflate athletics with desire; Mark Bradford’s papier-mâché balls relate soccer to immigration and socioeconomic class; photographer Mohamed Camara evokes nostalgia and escapism while considering the place of football in his native Mali; Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed’s sculpture of Zinedine Zidane lays bare the aggressive masculinity that often dominates sports while acknowledging the fallibility of today’s athletes; and Ghanaian Owusu-Ankomah utilizes adinkra symbols to promote nationalism and subvert colonial histories. In these diverse ways, diasporic African artists rethink football’s position in world culture, utilizing the sport as a complex metaphor for contemporary society.

In 2010, a global audience of over 700 million people watched the FIFA World Cup final, making the soccer championship the highest-rated event in television history. Considering the worldwide appeal of the sport, it should not be surprising that soccer appears frequently in the history of art. However, rather than eulogizing their footballing heroes, today’s artists employ soccer to question the status of celebrity, the aesthetics of sport, class and gender norms, globalization and media saturation. For example, Kehinde Wiley juxtaposes traditional African design with politically historicized representations of the African body in a series of portraits commissioned by sportswear designer PUMA; Lyle Ashton Harris documents crowds at soccer matches, chronicling codes of masculinity displayed by fans, players, and security guards alike; Andreas Gursky’s aerial photographs produce compelling abstractions that contemplate the geometry of the game; Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno rethink portraiture in their video montage of French icon Zinedine Zidane; and Sam Taylor-Wood revises histories of representation and beauty in her film of David Beckham sleeping. This paper examines how soccer occupies a prominent position within recent artistic practice, serving as the common ground for critical reflections about contemporary life.

In 2007, Goldman Sachs commissioned Julie Mehretu to paint a mural for their new office building in Lower Manhattan. While such projects are common throughout the history of art, the five million dollar price tag and role of Goldman Sachs in the current economic crisis raised many questions about corporate patronage of the arts. Two years later, Kehinde Wiley began several paintings for sportswear designer PUMA in advance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This relationship led to a Wiley-designed product line, including soccer cleats and shoe laces, yet his work garnered few of the criticisms levied against Mehretu. Whereas Mehretu situated histories of finance and commerce within layers of art historical styles and references in her epic Mural, Wiley juxtaposed traditional African design with politically historicized representations of the African body. This paper examines corporate patronage in contemporary African-American art, particularly how reception is shaped by notions of race, consumption, and elitism. These two examples serve as case studies for investigating the power of corporate branding in shaping artistic programs, as well as debates surrounding private patronage, contemporary art, and its perceived audience.

In 1949, John Cage was invited to speak at the Artists Club in New York City, an interdisciplinary arts project led by Robert Motherwell that would become a driving force behind Abstract Expressionism. The composer responded with his infamous “Lecture on Nothing,” a presentation featuring lengthy pauses that asserted the value of silence and nothingness. For many scholars, Cage’s performance challenged the doctrines of the New York School by replacing the artist’s ego with nothing. Considering this antithetical stance towards Abstract Expressionism, it seems curious that Robert Motherwell honored Cage with his collage, Blue with China Ink: Homage to John Cage (1946, Yale University Art Gallery). Art historians typically emphasize Cage’s later relationship with Robert Rauschenberg and subsequent rejection of Motherwell’s masculine subjectivity, establishing the two of adversaries because of divergent aesthetic and philosophical positions. Yet this notion overlooks the close relationship Motherwell and Cage maintained during their formative years. They traveled in many of the same circles, frequenting the Cedar Bar, teaching at Black Mountain College, and participating in the “Subjects of the Artist” school in New York. Motherwell selected Cage to be music editor of Possibilities, and although only one issue of the journal was published, their collaboration fostered a dynamic exchange of ideas. This paper retraces this understudied friendship, examining their shared interests and aesthetic congruities, particularly Cage’s impact on Motherwell’s emergent artistic philosophies.

Blue with China Ink sheds light on the relationship between Motherwell and Cage by celebrating shared interests that ranged from Zen Buddhism and Mallarméan poetics to aleatory operations and paratactic compositional structures. Collage proved an appropriate means for Motherwell’s tribute because both men have been considered pioneers of the medium. Each predicated their work upon chance, relativism, and the quotidian, stressing the experiential, juxtaposing indeterminacy with order, and testing the capacities of their respective media. Even their collaboration on the journal Possibilities employed the appropriative tactics of collage, as the co-editors randomly compiled disparate sources for their anthology. Although Motherwell and Cage would go in separate directions, Blue with China Ink remains a record of the brief period when they shared in a collage ethos centered upon common experience.

Yet this collage also chronicles Motherwell’s misreading of Cage’s artistic intentions, and the two had a falling out just a few years after the composition was completed. It seems that Motherwell’s abstract tribute was based on the person he hoped Cage would be: a Dadaist composer aligned with Motherwell’s ideals of modernism. Thus, a comparison of their work at this time reveals what brought them together, while anticipating how their art and music would diverge. The similarities and differences in their aesthetic approaches also expose how Motherwell misinterpreted Cage and why he considered the iconoclastic musician a kindred spirit in the first place. Ultimately, Blue with China Ink affords an opportunity to rethink Motherwell and Cage’s relationship as well as the formative years of Abstract Expressionism.

In 1953, Lee Krasner began making collages by tearing up and rearranging works executed by her and her husband, Jackson Pollock. Ellen Landau has interpreted these collages as an attempt to “possess” Pollock, Krasner’s symbolic means of connecting with her husband while validating herself as an artist.  Noting the expressivity of these compositions, Landau has associated the contingency of collage with Krasner’s struggle to overcome personal pain and professional failure. Bryan Robertson, however, has written that Krasner’s work “has always seemed… pastoral and bucolic but with highly personal inflections.”  While Robertson employed the word “pastoral” to refer to Krasner’s “preoccupation with nature,” his review indicates a far different assessment of Krasner’s oeuvre than Landau. How, then, do we reconcile such varied interpretations of Lee Krasner and her work?

By considering Krasner’s collages within the context of the pastoral, a new interpretation of her work is achieved. A pastoral perspective elucidates the formal and symbolic complexity of her collages, while synthesizing the diverse body of literature on the artist. The pastoral has traditionally defined a type of poetry concerned with the activity of shepherds, including leisure, animal husbandry, and lyric competition. However, since the modern era, critics have employed certain aspects of the pastoral, such as its oppositional strategy or emphasis on repose, to bestow new meanings upon this formerly archaic term. As such, the pastoral has been reinterpreted by critics like William Empson and Thomas Crow to examine the unique properties of the genre.  Some, like Crow, attribute the importance of the pastoral to its focus on modesty and simple means. Others, notably David Halperin, find significance within the oppositions highlighted by the pastoral, such as the contrast between the simple and complex, or urban and rural.  The pastoral was a term used frequently by the New York School, as many artists alluded to its traditions either in mood or title, and Clement Greenberg argued that “avant-garde pastoral art… revealed the most permanent features of our society’s crisis.”

By situating Krasner within the context of the pastoral, my paper employs a new framework to deconstruct her iconography, methods, and subject matter. Krasner’s pastoral vision ranged from the literal to the metaphoric, as she escaped to Long Island and found solace within her pieced-together compositions. Emphasizing materiality, revision, and contrast, I examine the ways in which Krasner’s collages met the pastoral criteria set forth by Crow, Halperin, and others. I also suggest that her desire for the simple life, and evocations of nature, established a mood akin to Virgilian shepherds. At the heart of Krasner’s pastoralism is collage, a medium based upon order and relativism. The act of arranging collage elements became a pastoral endeavor unto itself, Krasner’s pursuit of psychological and compositional order.

In 1936, General Francisco Franco seized control of Spain, sparking an intense civil war that triggered responses from artists across the world. Largely forgotten, however, was the reaction of the New York School’s only Spanish member, Esteban Vicente. Stranded in Madrid as the war began, he became involved with the Republican cause. After fleeing to New York, Vicente struggled to negotiate the war in Spain, becoming Vice Consul for the Republic while creating artworks to raise funds for Spanish refugees. Within this context, his abstractions evoke the traumatic experiences of Spain while celebrating the eventual fall of Fascism.