TY - JOUR
AU1 - Scott,, David
AB - Violence is an intrinsic potentiality of most forms of human and animal life. What civilises violence in human societies is not so much its elimination as its regulation and control through communally agreed conventions. The three main ways through which Western or European civilisation has attempted, outside of war, to manage and control violence are mythologisation, symbolic re-enactment, and symbolic representation – or, put in simpler terms: myth, sport, and art. Mythological figures embody or personify the violent forces operative in the natural and the human world; sports re-enact through controlled physical action the forms taken by violent confrontation – group or individual – in human society; literature and art represent the moral and aesthetic issues at stake in such confrontations. The aim of this essay is to explore the way that sport and art as expressions of human confrontation with violence have been re-enacted in Europe through the representation of boxing in visual art.1 One of the most striking common features of sport and art is their aesthetic visibility. By this, I mean that in highlighting violent action and the perpetrators of it, both forms of cultural expression represent also a heightened sense of meaning. Objects or movements take on an aesthetic dimension when they are highlighted in such a way that their significance (moral, social, or ethical) becomes vividly apparent, and the spectacle can be enjoyed both as object or action, and as symbol. The visibility of both sport and art thus draws attention to and enhances the meaning of cultural representation. It is perhaps for this reason that artists from the Greeks onward concerned themselves with sport in the same way that they did with mythological action, that is, because of the human interest in violence and the need to control or contain it through symbolic representation; and because of its visual interest, in particular the way it allowed the enactment of the protagonists’ courage and strength.2 Boxing is one of the most visible and aesthetic sports, its evolution as more or less recorded in history over the last three thousand years reflecting the gradual civilisation or formalisation of the lethal and chaotic potentiality of fighting. First and foremost, boxing became, with the Greeks, a general spectacle, viewed in a public arena, within a defined space. The performance of the combatants became thus open to public approbation and judgement within a certain ethos. For the boxers themselves, for their spectators, and for those who write on the sport or attempt to express in visual terms its contained violence, the arena and, more particularly later, the boxing ring, is a dynamic field in which tensions and oppositions, chaos and order, predictability and surprise are played out in a concentrated spatial and temporal framework. More recently, the impact of boxing on modern artistic movements (Futurism, Cubism, Art Deco) has reflected the joint concerns in art and in sport with movement, power, impact, and aesthetic symmetry, the comparative study of which can reveal unforeseen areas of correspondence. The beauty of boxing to the Greeks was enhanced both by the athletic physique of the practitioners and the movement of their bodies as they entered into violent interaction. Boxers fought naked (except for their leather hand-wraps), with their bodies oiled, and thus provided a perfect spectacle of the male human physique in action. Ancient sculptors, like modern painters (such as Thomas Eakins, Fig. 4) thus had recourse to the boxing gym or to pugilistic contests as sources of study for their art, and the boxing match became, like mythological or heroic subjects, a subject of aesthetic representation in painting, ceramics, and sculpture from early in Greek civilisation. So the representation of two boxers on a Greek vase from Rhodes from the sixth century bc (Fig. 1) provides both an appropriately significant representation of male valour and beauty and a fitting decorative motif: the swelling torsos, buttocks, and thighs of the boxers echo the sensuous outward curve of the main body of the vase on which they are represented, emphasising the dynamic containment both of the action and the receptacle on which it is portrayed. In addition, the accuracy of the portrayal of the boxers’ actions tells us much about ancient Greek boxing technique and the boxer’s stance as well as the articulation of the male body as it comes into physical confrontation with its mirror-image.3 Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Greek vase (Rhodes), 6th century bc. Reproduced by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Greek vase (Rhodes), 6th century bc. Reproduced by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. But the boxer represented in a moment of fatigue or repose can be as expressive of all that is involved in the sport as images of pugilists in action. The Roman reproduction in bronze of a Greek sculpture showing a seated boxer (Fig. 2), for example, is both a poignant portrayal of the heroism of the fighting male and a demonstration of the power of sculpture to body forth in inanimate matter the vital energies of the human physique. The tiredness of the boxer is expressed by the slightly sagging shoulders and the way the arms rest heavily on the parted thighs. The stiffness of fingers and toes is suggested by the way the boxer appears to be flexing them, while the angle of the head, looking stiffly upward and rightward as though acknowledging a judgement, expresses both weariness and manly resignation. The misshapen nose and battered torso reflect the punishment the pugilist’s body has taken, while the play of the hands draws attention to the heavy leather gauntlets that offer protection to the fists that have been the instruments of the battering administered to the unseen opponent. As in the ceramic vase from Rhodes, the artist has accurately portrayed the Greek boxer’s essential kit: the three thick, circular leather pads that clothe the knuckles, the leather thongs wound round the wrist, and the bands of sheepskin worn below the elbow on which the sweating brow of the boxer will have been repeatedly wiped.4 Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide The Pugilist at Rest, bronze, c. 1st century ad; copy of an earlier Greek original. Reproduced by permission of the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome. Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide The Pugilist at Rest, bronze, c. 1st century ad; copy of an earlier Greek original. Reproduced by permission of the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome. The resurgence of boxing as a modern sport in eighteenth-century England brought a number of refinements to stance, action, and apparel. The modern ‘squaring-up’, or en garde, position was developed in part under the influence of modern fencing (which was often taught by the same masters) while boxers fought in breeches and shoes. The forerunner to the modern boxing glove or ‘muffler’ was introduced by John Broughton in 1743 for training bouts to alleviate the ‘Inconvenience of Black eyes, Broken Jaws and Bloody Noses’ (as an advertisement for Broughton’s Academy affirmed), while bouts were increasingly staged on raised trestles of square configuration. The raising of the ring a couple of feet above ground was to enhance the visibility of the action not only for its own sake but also to facilitate assessment of the fight’s progress by the many gamblers or ‘Fancy’ (later to be known more widely and simply as the ‘fans’), who now bet on the outcome of the bout or ‘prize fight’, a sobriquet under which the sport increasingly became known. As local heroes replaced the mythical warriors of the past, many prints and engravings were produced to mark memorable contests, and by the turn of the nineteenth century boxing became firmly established within the social and sporting scene.5 Thomas Rowlandson’s watercolour The Prize Fight (1787; Fig. 3) gives vivid insight into the social impact of the sport as well as illustrating the action of the fighters (who are probably footmen, butchers, or other men of lowly background) in the ring, along with the participation of their seconds and their cornermen. Rowlandson’s motley crowd of onlookers portrays a cross-section of late eighteenth-century English society, from the titled nobility watching the proceedings from their coat of arms-emblazoned carriages to the jostling riff-raff boozing and pick-pocketing in the foreground, with peasant onlookers peering from the distant landscape. The boxing action illustrates the modern pugilistic stance, the seconds egging on their fighters, and the bottle-men waiting in the ring’s corners to bring them succour if they are downed. Rowlandson’s mastery of graphic outline coupled with his delicate colour washes enables the viewer of his watercolour to grasp both the essentials and the myriad details of the scene, bringing it to life in a way that it is interesting to compare with modern attempts to create a similar synthesis, such as that of Milivoy Uzelac in his gouache of circa 1930 (Fig. 8), discussed below. Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Thomas Rowlandson, The Prize Fight, watercolour, 1787. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Thomas Rowlandson, The Prize Fight, watercolour, 1787. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. In the same way that during the nineteenth century boxing became progressively regularised and legalised, with the adoption of the Queensberry Rules, the use of gloves, and the teaching of boxing in boys’ schools and the army, so in painting and sculpture the sport became academicised, that is, represented in a conventional manner as a worthy object of moral and aesthetic contemplation within all strata of society. No nineteenth-century artist’s work expresses this development better than that of the American Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), in such paintings as Between Rounds (1899; Fig. 4). This work is one of several presentations of boxers that Eakins painted in 1898 and 1899, all of which explore the various states of tension, relaxation, or readiness to which the male body is susceptible. These pictures present the boxing match not only as a plausible scenario for Eakins’s promotion of male figure study as part of artistic training, but also as a specific context for an evocation of the psychological as well as physical tensions of the encounter.6 Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds, oil on canvas, 1899. Reproduced by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds, oil on canvas, 1899. Reproduced by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. A particular quality of Between Rounds lies in the way its curious compositional structure enhances both the social and psychological aspects of boxing. The fatigued boxer, arms resting against the top ropes of the ring, is being fanned by the cornerman’s towel, but in this instance only one corner of the ring is visible. The frame of the picture slices across the space of the ring, obliterating its right-hand side, the left-hand side of the painting being opened up to anecdotal detail that enlarges the temporal space that the one-minute interval between rounds affords. The restless onlookers shift in their seats, the timekeeper checks his watch and reaches for the bell, the policeman looks on with phlegmatic attention. In this way Eakins is able to express not only the tensions internal to the boxing action that is about to recommence, but also the anticipation or expectation on the part of the viewers. The exemplary status and enduring popularity of boxing as a sport in the twentieth century seems to be a function of various factors. Since the Greeks, it has always incorporated an aura of authentic heroism; at the same time, its appeal is essentially democratic: while widely supported among the urban working class, it was also a sport promoted in English public (upper-class) schools and colleges as a noble and character-building discipline. The particular compactness of the boxing ring lent itself well not only to live viewing but also to film and radio commentary, and later to television. The ‘black and white’ nature of the sport – a winner and a loser, combatants in a mirror relationship with each other, the possibility of the knockout, black corner and white corner, black shorts and white shorts, intense white overhead lighting, with the audience wreathed in obscurity – further added to its fascination. The intense visual stimulus the sport offered to the viewer along with its acute visceral impact also seems to have attracted twentieth-century artists, in particular those interested in new – more dynamic and challenging – forms of visual representation. In this context, Futurist or Cubist artists’ interest in boxing is understandable, particularly insofar as these movements were concerned to analyse the deeper, often dynamic, structures underpinning objects and visual experience in the modern world.7 The Futurist conception of internal dynamics offers an illuminating insight into both the plastic arts and boxing. For the leading Futurist painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), for example, artistic representation, to be effective, had to include the dynamic as well as the static aspect of the object. Boccioni’s theory of ‘plastic dynamism’ reflects the Futurist understanding of the need to introduce movement into the representation of objects in art, reflecting the new dynamism of twentieth-century life. The challenge to painter and sculptor became how to capture and express this dynamism in a static object. A set of new equations – object plus environment, body plus movement, speed and simultaneity – became the formulae governing Futurist artistic representation in which a ‘force-form’, derived from real form, produced a new form defining objects and their driving force. Such new forms would express both the intrinsic dynamism of the object and the actual dynamism of its interaction with its mobile or immobile environment. Boccioni’s sculptures, such as Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913; Fig. 5), provide an example both of the theory just outlined and of the latent energies of the boxer. This can be seen if Boccioni’s dynamic representation of the male figure is compared with the unidentified black boxer in Charles Hoff’s photograph (Fig. 6) of the 1940s. In the latter, the black boxer has just floored his white opponent; he is waiting, fists cocked, to continue the onslaught, depending on whether his opponent manages to rise from the canvas (which in this case seems unlikely). The readiness of his body is indicated by the tautness of muscles that run up his leg and back, and his raised fists. The bright overhead lights illuminating the boxing ring are reflected in the boxer’s gloves, boots, dark shorts, and glistening dark skin, creating a bronze-like patina. His body is a picture of animal alertness and latent energy. Figure 5 Open in new tabDownload slide Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. Reproduced by courtesy of the Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan. Figure 5 Open in new tabDownload slide Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. Reproduced by courtesy of the Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan. Figure 6 Open in new tabDownload slide Charles Hoff, Unidentified Boxers, black and white photo, c.1950. Figure 6 Open in new tabDownload slide Charles Hoff, Unidentified Boxers, black and white photo, c.1950. The concern with the dynamic potential of the static object is taken further by Futurists in their focus on moving objects: cars, trains, animals. Once again, sports such as boxing provide a perfect analogy to this conception, offering the example of a human body in constant motion within a controlled or framed environment. Boxing is about the interaction of forces implicit in the human body. It activates, dynamises the potential of human movement within a relatively circumscribed and therefore visible theatre or frame, that of the boxing ring. The punch is the perfect dynamic expression of the fist; it involves a movement that draws on the dynamics of the boxer’s body in its totality, the whole of the body weight being ideally transmitted through the arm and the fist to land on the opponent. Furthermore, the act of punching is performed in the circumscribed theatre of the boxing ring, in which action is viewed from all four sides, in other words, in an integral environment. Action is contained by the ropes, which add an extra dynamic to it while at the same time maximising its visibility. Aspects of this dynamic are illuminatingly illustrated by the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla (1871–1958), with reference both to the theory and practice of Boccioni as artist, and to the dynamics of the picture frame. Balla’s preoccupation with Boccioni’s fist, or more properly with Force-lines of Boccioni’s Fist (c.1915), can be traced through a number of pencil and coloured crayon sketches, gouaches, and even a sculpture made of red-painted cardboard. As with other Futurist works, Balla’s aim was to explore and analyse the lines of force intrinsic to the object while at the same time attempting to express them in visual terms. A mixture of abstract and representational design in which the indexical vigour of the former outmanoeuvres the iconic verisimilitude of the latter, Balla’s fist drawings present the object in its dynamic potential. The fist emerges as the straight right of a boxer moving dynamically forward, all the energy of the body, as in boxing, being directed into and through it as it punches its target. A red triangular form indicates the direction of the fist’s force, representing in abstract form the tangible movement of the body. Like boxing as a sport, the fist is a symbol of both violence and control, combining propensities towards beauty and danger, potentialities that the Futurists saw increasingly as interacting in dynamic tension in modern life. In another work by Balla, Futurist Frame (1927; Fig. 7), the energies implicit in the rectangle of the paper or canvas are expressed in the surrounding frame, a three-dimensional construct in which painted panels and batons of wood present in tangible form the dynamics inherent in the pictorial project. Balla’s frame allows the multiple potentialities of the picture plane to be imagined or fantasised by the viewer, the colouristic and sculptural qualities of the frame itself suggesting rhythms and dynamisms that have no need of further specific representation. The top left and bottom right corners of the frame incorporate triangles of white and, in this way, already activate dynamic movement in the frame itself as the enclosed square also becomes stretched into a trapezoid, thus problematising the exact whereabouts of the edge of the picture frame and introducing a kind of kinetic movement into the overall structure. The disposition of the batons, painted, as is often the case with the ropes of the boxing ring, in three colours (red, white, and blue), gives a schematic representation of the guard ropes as they bend and stretch under the impact of the boxers’ bodies, the rounded and geometrical forms extending beyond them perhaps representing further vectors of bodily movement or of the trajectory of punches. In any case, it is remarkable to observe how Cubist, Constructivist, or Art Deco presentations of the boxing ring, almost exactly contemporary with Balla’s frame, exploit the same trapezoidal dynamic and the same concern with the periphery as much as with the (often blank) centre of the work. Figure 7 Open in new tabDownload slide Giacomo Balla, Futurist Frame, painted wood, c.1927. Private collection, Rome. Figure 7 Open in new tabDownload slide Giacomo Balla, Futurist Frame, painted wood, c.1927. Private collection, Rome. Within a Cubist conception of art, boxing as a sport takes on a status similarly exemplary to that suggested in some Futurist works. This is because it facilitates real perception of movement and simultaneity of action. First, movement: the relative codification and stylisation of boxing moves – basic stance; six main styles of punch (left jab; straight right; left hook; right hook; left uppercut; right uppercut); frequent repetition of similar moves; symmetrical interaction of boxers, striking and parrying; boxers operating in mirror-image-like relationship with each other. Second, simultaneity: the close proximity of two boxers in a schematic cube of space in which two or more angles are simultaneously perceptible. The boxers in the ring (or, more properly, cube) are viewable from all angles simultaneously as they activate various circling and interacting movements within the ring/cube. The strobe-like effect created by ropes as seen by the viewer at the ring-side further activates the dynamic aspect of the boxing encounter. The painting Boxing Match (Fig. 8) by the Paris-based art deco painter Milivoy Uzelac (1897–1977) exemplifies, in slightly diluted form, many characteristics of representation in Cubist art. Uzelac takes boxing ring, boxers, referee, cornermen, audience (including a couple of swells in full evening dress), journalists, announcer, and film cameraman and creates a Cubist interaction of their various responses. The image is Cubist in the way separate components overlap with each other and in the way some components are arranged in expressive juxtaposition rather than conventionally verisimilar co-ordination (as in Rowlandson’s painting, Fig. 3). As befits a Cubist painting, the composition of Uzelac’s gouache is dynamic: angled panels surrounding a central ring are placed not square-on but as an asymmetrical diamond shape (as in Balla’s Picture Frame, Fig. 7). Movement is directed into and out of the picture frame. The body of the kayoed boxer, spread-eagled, and that of the referee (who is simultaneously indicating with one arm to the winning boxer to stay in his corner and with the other counting out the floored opponent) act as indices of the dynamics implicit both in the match and in the composition. The loudspeakers top left blare the weights of the boxers (both are heavyweights, at 89 kilos) into the arena. The effect of the spotlights’ light and shade is reproduced by pure splurges of colour (pure white and powder blue) that descend into the ring at angles, the maximum intensity of light being reflected by the white-clad figure of the referee in a position of asymmetrical centrality in the ring. The way the latter is stretched into an asymmetrical trapezoid at the corner in which the upright boxer awaits the final countdown is expressive of the pressure his body exerts against the ropes on which he is leaning. It also suggests the dynamic, catapulting action the ropes will have if the boxer is instructed to leap forward to finish off his opponent if the latter gets back up. Figure 8 Open in new tabDownload slide Milivoy Uzelac, Boxing Match, gouache, c.1930. Private collection, Dublin. Figure 8 Open in new tabDownload slide Milivoy Uzelac, Boxing Match, gouache, c.1930. Private collection, Dublin. Whereas Cubist, Futurist, and Constructivist artists were primarily concerned with exploring the object and its (albeit internal) dynamism from the outside, clarifying in the process the way it is perceived or experienced by the viewer, more recent artists have focused as much on the inner, psychological dimension of the boxing experience. This poses a particular challenge for a number of reasons. Firstly, because in boxing things happen so fast; it already takes a lot of concentration on the part of the viewer simply to follow the rapid succession of movements compressed into the three minutes of a round. Secondly, the intense visual excitement of boxing tends fully to absorb the viewer’s attention, drastically reducing his or her time to reflect on the competing boxers’ mental processes. And, thirdly, from the point of view of the boxer, since boxing is a sport in which reflection and action are of necessity so closely and intensely co-ordinated, it is extremely difficult to separate visceral experience (energy, pain, shock) from psychological reaction.8 The French installation artist Philippe Perrin (b. 1964) explored, between 1983 and 1990, in a project entitled My Last Fight, this psycho-physiological dimension. Significantly, in My Last Fight it is the theatre of the boxing encounter – the ring – that is transformed by the artist into an expression of what is at stake in both aesthetic and psychological terms (Fig. 9). So, the canvas that traditionally covers the surface of the boxing ring becomes the support of a giant self-portrait of the artist. The frame provided by the boxing ring, scene in the fight itself of an unarticulated psychological though physically fully apparent drama, is finally put to specifically artistic use as it frames the artist’s portrait. The size of the latter emphasises the vulnerability of both boxer and artist as they literally and metaphorically lay themselves open to the scrutiny of the viewer. The ropes enclosing the ring express not only the tensions implicit in the boxing encounter, but also the imprisoning of the portrait in its frame, the trapping of the combatant in his encounter with his opponent and the obligation of boxer and artist to perform within bounds that ensure maximum visibility and scrutiny of their actions by the viewer. In this way the metaphor of the boxing ring as site of heroic self-confrontation in a public sphere, a potentiality hinted at implicitly in some earlier artistic representations of it, is here made explicit. Figure 9 Open in new tabDownload slide Philippe Perrin, My Last Fight, installation, 1990. Reproduced by permission of Philippe Perrin. Figure 9 Open in new tabDownload slide Philippe Perrin, My Last Fight, installation, 1990. Reproduced by permission of Philippe Perrin. Whereas Perrin uses the full panoply of modern artistic techniques to realise his boxing project, Miguel Rio Branco (b. 1946), in Blue and Red (1993; Fig. 10), uses only colour photography, his main medium of expression in the 1990s. His use of a slow shutter speed of course implies movement: the blurring of the exercising boxers’ bodies expresses both the external (speed) aspect and also the internal (half-conscious absorption) aspect of their experience. This constitutes a vital but little-discussed aspect of boxing: the aim of training is to so exercise and prepare the body for split-second movement and automatic reaction that the mind itself scarcely keeps pace with the movement of events, the body’s reflexes and the brain’s instincts being trained to operate virtually independent of conscious decision. Boxing is the art of the perfect movement, the lightning blow, the instantaneous evasion, skills and reflexes that pose a formidable challenge also to boxing art as it tries in its turn to re-present them in graphic terms. The challenge implies achieving success both in expressing boxing or training action as really experienced by practitioner and in reproducing it in such a way that it can be shared, in an analogous form, by the viewer. Rio Branco achieves this in Blue and Red by suggesting that what the boxers in this situation experience is a rush of sensations – colour, texture, smell, movement – inextricably mixed in a kind of visceral or physiological matrix that numbs the conscious mind both to the pain and to the specific, analysable detail of their actions. They do not consciously look at their own bodies but focus on their body’s movement. So it is not figurative representation but sensations – red, blue; hot, cold; painful, calming – that constitute the essence of the experience and that the artist correspondingly invites the viewer to interpret in similar terms.9 Figure 10 Open in new tabDownload slide Miguel Rio Branco, Blue and Red, colour photo, 1993. Reproduced by permission of Miguel Rio Branco. Figure 10 Open in new tabDownload slide Miguel Rio Branco, Blue and Red, colour photo, 1993. Reproduced by permission of Miguel Rio Branco. To sum up: boxing art, like boxing as sport, is a contrivance designed to frame violence. The function of the frame is doubly motivated in that, in the artistic sense, it promotes visual concentration and therefore aesthetic appreciation, while in a sporting sense it both facilitates and makes visible corporeal interaction. The boxing ring, like the picture frame, both provides a focus for the observing gaze and a space in which violent action can be dynamically re-enacted: it works both for the fight fans observing from the outside and for the boxers on the inside of the ring, where both sets of participants (viewers and fighters) maximise their concentration and yet their room for manoeuvre. And, as with painting as it has developed in its recent forms, the boxing ring is susceptible to analysis in purely abstract terms – forces, space, dynamic interaction, a formal schematisation that, as the Futurist and other avant-garde artists have shown us, can tell us as much – if not more – about the potential of the human body in its environment as more conventional forms of visual representation. Of course, there are wider social and political dimensions to these developments, and parallels to be explored in the presentation of boxing in modern media such as photography and cinema. To do justice to these important features would require more extensive study than there is room for here, but by way of conclusion I will outline a few further directions.10 Taking the question of media first, there is no doubt that boxing photography, in the hands of a master such as Charles Hoff (1905–75) provides many valuable insights into both the ring-craft and the dynamic movement that play such an important role in boxing (see Fig. 6). The ability of the camera to capture an instantaneous moment of action – the unexpected punch, the lightning-fast body reflex, the knock-out blow – makes possible a finer understanding both of the movement of the human body under stress and also the power of the fist as a source of concentrated energy. Hoff’s photographs also capture for us the almost unimaginable contortions the human body in a fight situation is able to undergo and the way violent action leads to the formation of visual shapes that would otherwise go unperceived.11 In addition, the photographic process whereby each instantaneous shot frames the moment it has captured, renders it accessible to an acuter level of observation and analysis. Despite the many boxing films produced by Hollywood (the golden age of early cinema coincided exactly with the mass appreciation of boxing in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s), the cinematic potential of the sport has been little developed, at least in mainstream movies. This seems to have been because it has been the myth of the struggling fighter, the outcast, underdog, or misfit, striving to attain fame and fortune through his courage in the ring, that has predominated as a motive for cinematic representation of boxing. Very few boxing films actually give much insight into the technique, ring-craft, and subtle dynamic potential of the combat situation. This is in part of course because the boxing roles are predominantly played by actors (male or, more recently, female), not by seasoned masters of the sport. What boxing films tend to provide therefore is a glamorous parody of the deeper issues implicit in the boxing encounter – the nature of violence, the role of masculinity in forming the male ethos, the way this ethos may be experienced by women, and the way combat sports re-enact social struggle. The issues boxing raises, particularly in relation to modern masculinity in a post-military, post-heroic, post-religious age, have, paradoxically, found far richer expression in the long-established medium of literature than in photography or film. The question of what it means to be a man in the twentieth century is one to which boxing more than any other sport seems to propose an answer, one which many important writers in both Europe and America have formulated in a startling range of responses.12 The Belgian Symbolist dramatist and writer Maurice Maeterlinck, for example, in his essay ‘Éloge de la boxe’ of around 1900, adopts a Darwinian approach, arguing that, to counter the lethal violence of sword or firearm, the fist, perfected in its power and authority through the long evolution of the human body, is the appropriate weapon men should use to settle their differences. In this way a boxing match between the representatives of two warring factions would settle the differences between opposing powers, obviating the necessity of death and destruction of whole communities.13 Meanwhile, for the Austrian novelist Robert Musil, in his major three-volume tome The Man Without Qualities, boxing provides modern, post-religious man with an experience of physical and spiritual ecstasy that established faiths no longer seem to provide. It also provides a new theology that enables the man without qualities to rationalise his beliefs about mind and body and to enjoy, while controlling, the physical impulses that continue to affect human behaviour.14 With the old values of heroism, vocation, and military prowess finally destroyed by the horrors of the First World War, Musil sees boxing as providing a satisfying yet controlled outlet for violence. The frustrations of the post-Second World War male in a post-industrial, post-vocational age, in which machines and technologies increasingly supersede the laboriously acquired skills of traditional male occupations or professions, have been acutely analysed by American writers in particular, not least from a socio-historical perspective. So Gerald Early, in The Culture of Bruising, convincingly demonstrates the neurotic nature of post-Second World War male aggression as displayed in boxing, and the logical dead-end the sport in fact proposes the fighter.15 Since modern man is no longer able as an individual to make, through physical skill or strength, an authentic contribution to his community or economy, he strives to re-enact a manly vocation through boxing, an activity that is itself emptied of its real significance as, controlled by financial or other commercial interests, it has little genuine social significance: the boxer is thus as much a pawn in the hands of a larger capitalist game as is the now obsolete cobbler or steel-worker. Recent American novelists, such as Chuck Palahniuk in novels such as Fight Club (1997), summarise both the social insights of Early and the fictional elaboration of Musil in relation to the inescapable status of the modern male as a man without qualities.16 It is significant that the highly popular film version followed and did not precede the insights of the novel, the film indeed being as much a vehicle for the preening of a Hollywood movie star as an insight into the psychology of the contemporary male. In this way it seems that the literary and critical arts, using their primary medium of writing, have the most to say in deconstructing the social and historical myths surrounding boxing as a controlled expression of human violence and aggression. In this field, it is noticeable that women writers, newly acquainted with boxing and actively now participating in it on a professional as well as an amateur level, have provided valuable insights into a sport previously considered archetypally alpha-male.17 This does not mean, however, that the scope for insight into and analysis of boxing through the visual arts has become curtailed. It is merely a question of each art form – literature, painting, photography, cinema – being as attentive to the medium as much as the message of boxing as a form of representation, one providing new insights into the sport itself as well as into the various arts’ own methods. In this process, as this essay has argued, it the analysis of the boxing ring in abstract terms – forces, space, dynamic interaction – as well as in those of socio-historical imperatives – that facilitates an understanding of its deeper implications. Footnotes 1 The best account to date of the relationship between violence and boxing is André Rauch, Boxe: Violence du XXe siècle (Paris 1992); see also Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (London 1987). For the sociological implications of this question, major contributions include Gerald Early, The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature and Modern American Culture (Hopewell, NJ 1994); Carlo Rotella, Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (New York 2003); id., Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt (Berkeley, Calif. 2003); and John Sugden, Boxing and Society: An International Analysis (Manchester 1996). 2 An early and suggestive account of the relationship between boxing technique and visual representation is given by John V. Grombach in The Saga of the Fist: The 9000 Year Story of Boxing in Text and Pictures (London 1977); for a comprehensive account of the relationship between boxing technique and the visual arts, especially in the modern era, see David Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing (Lincoln, Nebr. 2009); a vivid account of boxing within modern visual culture is provided by David Chandler, John Gill, Tania Guha, and Gilane Tawadros in Boxer: An Anthology of Writing on Boxing and Visual Culture (Cambridge, Mass. 1996). 3 The idea that the male body finds its perfect expression in the boxer’s mise en garde or squaring-up position is expressed by Maurice Maeterlinck in his essay ‘Éloge de la boxe’, in Morceaux choisis (Paris, c.1900). 4 See Grombach, The Saga of the Fist. 5 The heroic age of British prize-fighting is memorably recorded in Piers Egan, Boxiana; or, Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism (1812; Leicester 1971), in a style and with a verve perfectly recaptured in mid-twentieth-century America by A. J. Liebling in The Sweet Science (London 1989). 6 For a fuller account of Eakins, see Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. 1982). 7 Arthur Cravan, Surrealist poet and heavyweight boxer, provides an exemplary case of the dynamic interaction of sport and literature or art, as is shown by Roger Conover in his study Four Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma and Jacques Vaché (London 1995). 8 For an enthralling account of the boxer’s psychological experience, see Robert Anasi, The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle (Edinburgh 2002). 9 Rio Branco’s photographs constitute part of his Santa Rosa series reproduced in the Coleçao Pirelli in the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (Editora Gráficos Burti, 1997). 10 For a broad survey of boxing, see Kasia Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History (London 2008). 11 Some of these moments are analysed in Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, pp. 37–50. 12 For a comparative analysis of American and European attitudes to boxing, see Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, pp. 131–9. 13 For a fuller discussion of Maeterlinck’s position on boxing as set out in ‘Éloge de la boxe’, see Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, pp. 131–4. 14 Musil’s promotion of boxing’s potential as a modern theology is discussed further in Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, pp. 134–5. 15 The concept of neurotic masculinity is persuasively articulated by Early in The Culture of Bruising; see also Rotella, Cut Time, and Good with Their Hands. 16 In Fight Club Palahniuk indeed gives expression both to the vocational anxiety of the late twentieth-century male and the quasi-religious nature of the boxing or fighting experience. 17 For an account of female writers’ responses to boxing, see Scott, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, pp. 41–3. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Quarterly. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Boxing and Art
JF - The Cambridge Quarterly
DO - 10.1093/camqtly/bfz024
DA - 2019-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/boxing-and-art-ZW3clXPSQ6
SP - 303
VL - 48
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -