ABSTRACT
Sports, as we know, never stop changing and, in the next two chapters, we will examine how visual media have reflected and inspired those changes. Chapter twelve will focus on electronic media, especially television, the function of which was intended to report rather than interpret sports. But, art has a different purpose and, in this chapter, I want to examine how artists have approached athletic competition. In the process, I will show how art provides us with a history of sport somewhat different from the history we have disclosed so far. This is a history as revealed through the eyes of painters, sculptors, and film-makers, many of whom were not interested in the significance of sport as a cultural institution; their interests were with images created in the movement excited by sports competition.
