Purism and the category of ‘the aesthetic’: the drama argument

This paper examines one component of Stephen Mumford’s case for the claim that we should regard sport, art and the aesthetic as more closely connected than has tended to be the case, under the influence of the work of David Best, in recent years. Mumford’s rejection of what I call ‘the drama argument’ is examined in detail and it is argued that all but one element of his case fails to do the job he envisages.     

Mumford on aesthetic–moral interaction in sport

Stephen Mumford argues that aesthetic and moral values in sport are interdependent, focusing on cases where immorality taints beautiful performance. This interdependence thesis is insightful but, I argue, in need of refinement, as its normative implications are unclear and perhaps implausible (e.g. the Nazi aesthetics problem). I also challenge Mumford’s perspective on the infamous Dynamo Kiev death match. Whereas Mumford claims that the match’s morally oppressive circumstances detract from it so that ‘it was not something knowingly we should have admired aesthetically’, I argue that, on the contrary, and in light of what Mumford says about other cases, such circumstances actually enhance the game’s aesthetics such that it would be wrong not to appreciate it aesthetically.     

Art Works as Sources for Sport History Research: The Example of ‘Sports Allegory/The Crowning of the Athletes’ by Charles Louis Frédy de Coubertin

Abstract

Sport historians rarely use works of art as sources for their research. The main challenge they face is the difficulty to draw information and insights from the paintings that lie beyond what is apparent at first glance. This paper introduces the art historical methodology of iconological analysis that is of benefit to sport historians. This three-step approach is a tool for interpreting art works and contextualizing them with relevant biographical and societal information that influenced the artist’s life and work. The art work analyzed in this paper is the painting ‘Sports Allegory/The Crowning of the Athletes’ by Pierre de Coubertin’s father, the artist Charles Louis Frédy de Coubertin (1822–1908). This painting was chosen because of its relevance and importance to Olympic history. Up to now this piece has not been critically analyzed in sport history, and hence hardly any documentation on it can be found.     

Sport as a drama

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at the meaning of sport as a drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual.     

Sport,Aesthetic Experience,and Art as the Ideal Embodied Metaphor

Despite a prevalence of articles exploring links between sport and art in the 1970s and 1980s, philosophers in the new millennium pay relatively little explicit attention to issues related to aesthetics generally. After providing a synopsis of earlier debates over the questions ‘is sport art?’ and ‘are aesthetics implicit to sport?’, a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience will be developed. Aesthetic experience, it will be argued, vitally informs sport ethics, game logic, and participant meaning. Finally, I will argue that embodying pragmatic conceptions of art as its ideal metaphor re-opens space to best realize the deep potential of sport as a meaningful human practice.     

The “Hand of God”'s: Essays in the Philosophy of Sport By Claudio M. Tamburrini. Published 2000 by Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis,Box 222, SE-405 30, Sweden (167 pp.)

This paper contains a consideration of the notion of genius and its significance to the discussion of the aesthetics of sport. We argue that genius can make a positive aesthetic contribution in both art and sport, just as some have argued that the moral content of a work of art can affect its aesthetic value. A genius is an exceptional innovator of successful strategies, where such originality adds aesthetic value. We argue that an original painting can have greater aesthetic value than an exact replica, merely because it is the original. By parity of reasoning, a successful innovation in sport has additional aesthetic value just because it is a new creation. The genius is one who can provide this extra aesthetic pleasure and on that basis is rightly valued. The genius need not be conscious of how they achieve such innovations and thus find their own genius to be something they cannot explain but only demonstrate. In sport, innovations that offer new ways of playing or solving problems can produce competitive success which demands instant recognition and rewards.     

In Praise of Partisanship

J.S. Russell, Stephen Mumford, and Randolph Feezell have criticized my view that zealous partisans of a particular team are superior to purists, who derive an esthetic pleasure from good play by any team. All three philosophers extol the virtues of purism and Russell defends a pluralistic view that rejects the very idea of an ideal type of fan. In response, I renounce the claim that partisans are superior to purists and instead propose a more modest defense of partisanship. Moderate partisan fans, who constrain their support by moral and esthetic criteria, exhibit admirable concern for their team’s wellbeing, have unique opportunities to display moral virtue, and are necessary for the welfare of competitive sport. Partisans’ choice of team is influenced by arbitrary factors but arbitrariness is built into the very nature of sport and applies equally to purists’ admiration of athletic excellence. It diminishes neither the value of athletic excellence nor the value of partisans’ devotion to their team.     

Furthering Interpretivism’s Integrity: Bringing Together Ethics and Aesthetics

One important limitation of the current renditions of interpretivism is that its emphasis on the moral dimension of sport has overlooked the aesthetic dimension lying at the core of this account of sport. The interpretivist’s failure to acknowledge and consider the aesthetic implicitly distances this realm from the moral. Marcia Muelder Eaton calls this distancing the separatist mistake. This paper argues that interpretivism presupposes not only moral but also aesthetic principles and values. What it sets out to demonstrate is that interpretivism is an integralist, or nonseparatist, account of sport, one in which ethical and aesthetic values are not exclusive. Making explicit and specifying interpretivism’s combined moral-aesthetic approach to sport not only helps to better distinguish the whole range of values that make up sport as well as their interconnection but also encourages sportspeople to pursue more coherent sport and, thus, more enriching lives.     

A Female Medallist at the 1928 Olympic Art Competitions: The Sculptress Renée Sintenis

Abstract

Olympic Art Competitions were part of the Olympic programme for 36 years in the first half of the twentieth century. According to sport history research, one of the reasons for their suspension was the participation of unknown artists. A careful analysis of the sources used by sport historians reveals that little is known about the artists. Even less is known about female artists in this context. Investigating the example of the German sculptress Renée Sintenis (1888–1965), medallist of the 1928 Olympic Art Competitions, is an attempt to address this research gap. Biographical research about the sculptress provides art historical evidence for her successful career, her impressive oeuvre and her outstanding societal position as a female artist; and, in doing so, backs up the publications by sport historians. Furthermore, the paper illustrates the circumstances under which female artists participated in the Olympic Art Competitions, evidencing that the artistic competitions had not been a topic on the agenda of the International Olympic Committee. Importantly, it also demonstrates that Pierre de Coubertin’s artistic family environment influenced his thinking about female artists in the Olympic Art Competitions.     

竞技武术套路的美学特征

竞技武术套路是一项体育运动,在套路中谈论美学是非常必要的。随着竞技武术套路中技击作用的逐渐减弱,人们的审美倾向逐渐趋向于它的艺术价值等方面。比赛中用美学价值来评定武术的技术水平,对竞技武术套路的编排和运动员的演练提出了更高要求。我们要不断丰富和发展竞技武术套路这一传统文化的内容,使它充分体现东方体育文化的独特魅力。     

体育艺术化释义

体育艺术化不是将体育转变为艺术,而是实现体育价值多元化,强化其审美价值。体育艺术化的具体途径包括体育表层的艺术化、本体层的艺术化和内核层的艺术化。体育融合艺术丰富了体育的表现形式,充实了体育的文化内涵,是体育表层的艺术化;在发现体育美的基础上,通过修改规则等手段创造和强化体育美,排除破坏体育美的因素是体育本体的艺术化;体育艺术的创作是体育内核层的艺术化,体育艺术的创作是使稍纵即逝的体育美成为永恒的艺术美,拓展了体育美的表现形式。     

体育与艺术之研究

体育与艺术都起源与劳动,是人们创造的体外文化现象,是人的精神生命对物质生命的超越,也是人类社会发展到一定历史阶段的产物。体育与艺术的结合,使奥林匹克运动融入了更加丰富的美学元素。体育与艺术的融合是双向的律动,体育的发展离不开艺术,同时体育运动的发展可以促进艺术的进一步发展。     

Emotions and aesthetics: an inevitable trade-off?

Sport is a producer of both emotional and aesthetic experiences. But how do these relate? Does a spectator’s emotional engagement in sport enhance or hinder it as an aesthetic experience? And does the aesthetic perception of sport enhance or hinder the emotional experiences? These questions will be addressed with particular reference to the distinction that can be drawn between partisan and purist watchers of sport, and making use of thinking in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy of emotion. There are some reasons to think that emotion and aesthetics pull in opposite directions, in both sport and wider life. Does a purist miss out on the essence of sport if they adopt a detached aesthetic attitude? If that were the case, it would suggest that the sports spectator might have to choose between the two: experiencing one or the other but not both at the same time. Emotions and aesthetics would be a trade-off but I argue for some significant exceptions to this conclusion.     

The Re-enchantment of the World: The Relationship Between Sport and Aesthetics Illustrated by Two Classic Cycling Films

This article invites historians to reconsider the nature of sport, which is here defined as essentially aesthetic. The sporting aesthetic, however, is a by-product of competition as athletes struggle to outperform their rivals and to overcome their own limitations. It is argued here that these aesthetic qualities have been captured in two documentaries by the Danish film-maker J?rgen Leth – Stars and Water Carriers (1974) and A Sunday in Hell (1976) covering the 1973 Giro d'Italia and the 1976 Paris-Roubaix cycle races respectively. Leth's films effectively challenged contemporary Marxist views that sport was simply a banal distraction or a means of legitimizing the capitalist system. Their power, it is suggested, lies in their depiction of grand, heroic themes that echo classical myth and legend. Indeed, sport's enduring popularity may reside in its capacity to offer a glimpse of an mythological universe that has been marginalized by modernity.     

Herculean “Myth” Aspects of Athletics

This paper argues that recent treatments of ethics in sport have accorded too much importance to the promotion and portrayal of a sport’s excellences, and too little to the consent of participants First, I consider and reject a fundamental challenge to the idea that consent should play a central role in determining the morality of action in sport – namely, Sean McAleer’s argument to the effect that consent is incapable of rendering normally impermissible actions permissible in sport. I then offer a preliminary examination of the proper relation in the moral evaluation of action in sport between considerations of consent and ‘internalist’ considerations regarding the nature and purpose of sport. Taking as my starting point J.S. Russell’s treatment of this topic, I argue that consent is the more weighty, and in many cases the more fundamental, value and that when it conflicts with internalist considerations, it is consent that takes moral priority.     

Should chess and other mind sports be regarded as sports?

In the philosophy of sport, an opinion that chess (and other institutionalized mind games, the so-called mind sports) is in fact not sports because it lacks physical skills is a standard position. I call the argument that leads to this conclusion a mind sport syllogism. Its analysis enables me to explicate four possible positions concerning the sport-status of chess. Apart from the standard position, which excludes chess from the sport family, I also present analysis of other possible positions, which – for various reasons – do not deny that chess is a sport. A position that postulates including chess into the family of sport by broadening the definition of sport turns out to be particularly interesting from the philosophical viewpoint. Having confronted this position with the standard, i.e. ‘conservative’, position, I come to the conclusion that the conceptual revision consisting in the broadening of the concept of sport is a rational option and is a probable direction of the evolution of the concept of sport.     

Sharing (modern) experiences: sport (body) – (image) cinema

This article discusses the preponderance of aesthetic aspects within the sport experience, especially as these are reflected in the dialogue between sport and cinema and in relations established via the use of images and the emergence of new ideas of the body at the beginning of the twentieth century. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part identifies points of connection between sport and cinema. The remaining parts interpret the meaning of these connections. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize that sport is not only a theme for art but also a language that establishes inter-semiotic dialogues, something that is deeply characteristic of sport and a source also of its aesthetic meaning.     

艺术体育运动对高校校园体育文化的影响

艺术体育是集健身、娱乐、审美、休闲、体验、观赏于一体的大众体育运动,是当今社会需要的一种新颖的休闲、健身方式。本文从现阶段高校校园体育文化状况及内涵入手,阐述了高校校园体育文化特征,重点分析了艺术体育运动在高校的开展优势及其对高校校园体育文化构建的影响及推动作用,并对构建高校校园体育文化建设提出了相关的建议。     

现代奥运会艺术比赛的由来和历史沿革

对现代奥运会艺术比赛的发展历程进行分析,借以说明它的重要意义和积极作用.奥运会是集文化艺术、商业活动和竞技比赛的盛大集会,现代奥运会与古代奥运会别无二致.虽然从十九世纪中叶开始,奥运会就设置了艺术比赛的项目,但由于艺术门类多样、评价标准不一等原因,是否应该设项比赛的问题始终困扰着国际奥委会和承办国,最后不得不将艺术比赛改为艺术展览.艺术与体育的审美效果具有合则双赢,离则两伤的特点.古代希腊人创立的这种模式具有非凡的文化意义和积极的社会作用,它被今天的人类继承、发扬和改良,相信它还将被永远地传承下去.     

试论体育形态的演化:象征·意义·生成

运动-游戏从象征意义的产生,到文化内部审美的生成,再到圣洁、崇高意义的消解,经历了象征意义的不同演化。以象征意义的演化为切入点,运用形态学的研究方法,分析了象征的表意与构意、结构与分类、意义的分化与异化等,揭示了运动-游戏象征构意的特征:从附着性到独立性进而形成独立完整的现代体育形态,其文化特征也由带有宗教祭祀意义的简单象征为主转化为集中到表现人与自然、社会的和谐关系上。现代体育象征意义产生以后,体育发展的内在逻辑受到商品交换关系的影响,其象征意义被大众文化压缩在元象征的价值平面内,从而导致现代体育文化价值偏平化。因此,把现代体育引入艺术化、审美化的境地是其象征意义困境的突围路径也是无奈选择。