Text by Nehama Gottlib
Participants:
Osnat Austerlitz, Rotem Balva, Ori
Gersht, Dror Daom, Meirav Heiman,
Gal Weinstein, Sharon Yaniv, Eti Jacobi, Sharon Yaari, Adi Nes,
Roi Kuper, Zoltan Kluger, Doron
Rabina, Yoav Shmueli.
Game's closeness to art is clear for all to see. Just like art the game also creates an imaginary world, ". expropriated from daily reality. The virtue of creating an imaginary world closed within itself is seen as a clear sign of art and aesthetics that often compares artistic creation to an island surrounded by water."1
While working on the exhibition, I became aware of many different points of view relating to the strategies operating in the art world on the one hand, and those that are dominant in the world of sport on the other, and the similarities between them. Despite the works not relating directly to the subject, the exhibition "Rules of the Game" intends to illustrate through them the hidden connections and the concealed and visible rules of the game that exist in both worlds and between them.
There are fourteen artists participating in the exhibition showing works from the past three years, apart from Zoltan Kluger's works from the 1940s.2 Photographs, video, and works in mixed media. Some of the artists are active sportsmen and women, such as Eti Yakobi and Meirav Heiman. Osnat Austerlitz, Rotem Balva, Ori Gersht, Yoav Shmueli, and Dror Daom took part in sports in their pasts.
The Game
Art and games work in a system of rules and conventions. They need an audience for their game-like characteristic to exist. This is because games mean mutuality and dialogue between people. The game is open for all. In a simple and immediate manner it permits a distancing from daily routine and taking part in a wider social circle by being an interpersonal and collective means of communication.
The preoccupation with sport fills various needs in a person's personality, whether passive (as viewer) or active (as sportsperson). Sport causes dramatization and catharsis. It allows one to become filled with emotion, derive sensual pleasure, release stress, and belay fears. In many cases it shapes personalities and causes feelings of being alive, euphoria, elation, giddiness, and belonging. The deepest motives that push people to deal with sport are connected to self-love, aggression, eroticism, and to control. Above all are the needs rooted in leadership or competition urges.
The world of sport and the world of art
The place and the time.
". the tournament, the show on the stage and the ritual act are their symbol that they exist for a set time. More than that, what is prominent is that the game is limited to a place. The arena, the playing table, the wizard's cake, the temple and the stage - all these testify to the game's tendency to create its own space."4 Ori Gersht's work Pitch (as with the whole series) deals with the role of mass culture and the status of the arena/stadium in it. It documents the last game between England and Brazil. In Roi Kuper's work Mitzpe Ramon an abandoned football field in the heart of a desert landscape is emptied of all inhabitants and moments of glory.
The Spectacle
"The spectacle is the main production of present-day society."5
Both the artist and sportsperson are exposed to spectacle by being also slaves to spectacle. Everyone looks at players, at athletes, at the sports field. On the television, in slow motion, every move, every muscle, every bead of sweat is examined. The intimate experience is transformed into a public one. Creating art is dependant on spectacle, its existence is conditional on the viewer's gaze, the artist that created it stands exposed before criticism and public debate. In Osnat Austerlitz's work from her "Athletes" series, photographs have been taken from the television screen where one sees a diver and the judges.
Social - The Cultural Icon
Amongst the most meaningful "cultural heroes" in our society the sports stars can be listed in the same breath as those of rock and film. For many, sports stars have a super status. For example, David Beckham, the British footballer, is a mega-star not only in Britain, and he is not alone. In terms of the number of people who worship the new divinity, the iconization of sports stars has almost no comparison in other cultural areas. The "iconness" signifies people, places, and events such as record-breaking Olympic moments, or an unforgettable goal. It looks like artists in our time will not reach the status of sports stars, but there are works of art that become immortal and easily traverse hundreds of years. Sharon Yaniv has chosen the mythic figure of an American football player as signifier of American society. America is certainly more than football, but if you remove the football from America you take away the country's breath. In Osnat Austerlitz's work, the basketball pitch is "illuminated" in a halo of sanctity. Opposite it is the British icon - Wembley Stadium eternalized by Ori Gersht.
The Sisyphean Aspect
".to run, to jump, to lift weights, to crawl, to bend knees. To stand again, to stand, to bend knees, fast, fast, faster, to run around, to lie flat, to crawl, to stand, to run, to stand still, hour upon hour, day upon day, stand! Dress! Undress! Dress! Undress! Run! Jump! Crawl! ."6
Within the concept of "athlete" are blended concepts of effort, strength, perseverance, suffering, and self-love. If in games a door is opened onto a life that seemingly has freedom, then that "freedom" is bound to a regime and infinite sacrifice. As an extended and demanding creative process that demands much practice, this sometimes seems to be endless. A mechanical body diving into the water (Osnat Austerlitz), the cracks of a squash game (Eti Yakobi), effort focused on the palms of the hand (Doron Rabina), knocks of a tennis ball against a wall (Rotem Balva), continuous walking (Meirav Heiman).
The Fragility
".because of the opponent's determination, or the selector's desire, the champion can lose, in a second, the title that he has worked so hard for and that must be guarded with all the soul. A loyal audience will rise against him and gather round the handful of food, cubes of sugar and smiles of the new winners."7
A thin chalk line marks the temporary territory of the tennis court in Sharon Yaari's work. This is what a gold line looks like, which is seen in Dror Daom's work.
Publicity and Commercialization
Thanks to the enormous budgets invested in brand name advertising, figures and events catch our attention. We are exposed to unnecessary details - from the minutiae to the infinite. Because of its wide distribution, sport and its "merchandise" take over the screens of written and electronic media. The television image tries to turn the world of brand names and commodities into the "real thing" as exemplified in the exhibition by the "Nike" commercial. Plastic art carries on a critical and different dialogue with the culture of commodities and brand names. Since the 1960s it "chooses" areas of activity with affinity to mechanization, modes of distribution, reproduction, and advertising. Most of the works in the exhibition are "untouched by human hand" (as they are in painting and sculpture). The exceptions are the works by Gal Weinstein, Yoav Shmueli, and Dror Daom.
Narcissism and Beauty
The narcissist preoccupation with "body culture," which worships appearance and the athletic body demands the endless investment of time, money, and effort. Many people are slaves to the new ideals of beauty, eternal youth, the healthy and attractive look of sportsmen and women. Prominent, amongst other things, in the work of Adi Ness and Yoav Shmueli is the preoccupation and search for the ideals of male young and winsome beauty.
Nechama Gottlib
Sources:
1. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, from the introduction by Prof. Moshe Barash of Huizinga's theory, (Tel Aviv: Bialik Publishing House, 1998), p. 30 [Hebrew].
2. Kluger, as with other photographers of his generation, was of the first photographers in Israel to document sporting events. He trained his style to the national needs of the time. "The national institutions tried to build a stereotypical heroic figure of the New Jew in Israel - proud, lucid, larger than life, with European facial features (lacking an individual identity) and often in the swing of work." I chose Kluger's work because of the difference between the point of origin and what is seen.
From: Rona Sela (author and editor), Photography in Palestine/The Land of Israel in the 1930s and 1940s (Herzliya Museum of Art and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing, 2000), p. 40 [Hebrew].
3. Yakobi is a player on the Israeli national squash team.
4. Huizinga, op. cit., p. 28.s
5. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1995), theses 15.
6. Georges Perec, W or the Memory of Childhood (Hasifria Hahadasha, 2001), p. 161 (translated from the Hebrew).
7. Perec, ibid., p. 149.
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Asnat Austerlitz ,Hapoel , Color print , 80X100 c.m 2002
Gal Weinstien , Untitled Steel wool on Cardboard , 70X50 c.m , 2001 , Courtesy of Chelouche gallery
Untitled Adi Nes , Color print , 60X50 c.m , 1992 , Courtesy of Dvir Gallery
Roi Kuper , Mitspe
Ramon , Color print , 90X90 c.m , 2003
Dror Daum , Succeed to Fail , Photograph reproduction, Acrylic ,2001
Asnat Austerlitz , Untitled , From the series "Athletics", Color print , 80 X100 c.m , 2002
Rotem Balva , Tennis , Image from Perphomance , Quimper , France , 2001 ,
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