When I heard that Roger Federer liked
modern art, I was immediately curious about what, and though I never found that
out, the search itself was interesting. Most of the listings you get if you put
his name together with art are paintings of him and articles about his playing
as art. The best is the 2006 David Foster Wallace piece in the New York Times
describing him.
Beauty is not
the goal of
competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression
of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re
talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic
beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or
cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’
reconciliation with the fact of having a body.(1)
A decade later he is still winning grand
slams. Mihaly Czentmihali wrote that the creation of one’s own self can be as
exciting as writing a symphony. What moves me about Roger Federer and Serena
Williams is that they have done just that, created a work of art that sculpts
both body, skill and character out of the whole of themselves. Roger and Serena
are examples of embodied art in the realm of immediate intelligence.
When someone is centered and expressive of
the core of their being, that’s art. It takes skill to reach a relationship
with a mode of expression that enables it to be a natural extension of the
body, responses finely tuned to go where intuition leads. The body/mind knows
what it knows and can act before thought. This metaknowledge is part of the
initial feeling. Not just comprised of emotion, our feelings are as complex as
we are, responses from the whole picture of our background in combination with
our current state. Because Roger Federer has developed so many ways to hit a
tennis ball together with all he’s seen about how the opponents play he’s
developed a body/mind response that’s highly sophisticated yet unencumbered by
analysis. Like any artist he extends the range of what tennis can be.
In a short
piece in Art News, Andrew Russeth quoted a Sports Illustrated interview with
Roger Federer saying he liked modern art because it helped him keep an open
mind, that as he gets older it gives him inspiration. Watching tennis at its
best inspires me to stretch my own capabilities. Excellence is always inspiring.
Modern art
opens the mind by pushing the edges of perception. This enlarges the scope of
choices. Looking at art increases sensitivity to intuitive response and
awareness of how we’re led by underlying overall adjustments, the inclinations
that move us before we’ve figured them out. Art attunes our feelings to
meaningful form and so builds the scope of understanding. The brain is
structured to mirror the spatial world and understand the meaning of things by
how everything looks within it. The more in harmony we are with ourselves and
what’s happening around us the better we can flow with it. Focused attention
comes after immediate attention reacts.
Tennis is
a demanding and artful sport. Players styles are unique and bigger doesn’t mean
better. Women’s tennis is treated with the same respect as men’s and provides
just as many opportunities to be amazed.
The players we like best are as personal as the art we like, each with
an individual style of meeting the challenges posed by another. This year’s US
Open will include record setting players, still at the top of their form. It’s
an opportunity to be both impressed and inspired.
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