The Art of Athletics (7): David Hockney on jogging and smoking

David Hockney's most celebrated works feature Californian swimming pools, most notably his A Bigger Splash (1967) which I saw recently at Tate Britain. 

 Runners feature in his 'The Seven Stone Weakling', one of  his Rake's Progress series of prints documenting the artist's first time in  New York in the early 1960s.  

It is the artist himself who watches blankly as two men run past, and Hockney's slightly bemused attitude to fitness continues to this day. In an article in the FT last year in defence of  smoking in the open air he wrote:

'I remember the time I used to walk up through Holland Park to Lucian Freud’s studio. Seeing the black rabbits playing on the grass I sat down to watch them, and lit a cigarette. Then some magpies joined them and I was enjoying it. Then along came three girls jogging, who on seeing me smoking gave me a no-no salute. I pondered them and noticed they had not seen the magpies or the rabbits. They thought they were very healthy, but I thought I was healthier. They were obsessed with their own bodies. When people are jogging they are thinking of body management; when you walk the mind can range over far and wide. Walking is better than running, which wears out your knees and leaves you with excruciating shin pain'.

(David Hockney, Tobacco killjoys are less healthy than the smokers they ban, FT,  17 October 2014)

Of course I don't agree with him about running - the mind can range far and wide while running even if both runners and walkers can be so wrapped up in their own thoughts that they fail to notice their surroundings. But I am sympathetic to his opposition to banning smoking in parks - something that has already happened in New York and has been proposed for London. We don't have to like everything that people do in 'The parks, the great unroofed outdoors, places where people are not crowded together like on the street' (Hockney), but I think for the most part people should be free to do what they like as long as it doesn't genuinely harm other people. Some people would ban smokers, others would ban drinking, dogs, groups of young people, music or sports. No doubt some people find hundreds of runners charging round their local park on a Saturday morning an inconvenience, but parks would be dead spaces if every activity that mildly irritated somebody else was banned.  I don't particularly like getting the occasional mouthful of smoke if I run past somebody smoking, they might not like their peaceful morning stroll being disturbed by me, but we have to get along - as they say at every parkrun briefing, remember you are not the only park users.

See also in the Art of Athletics series:

John Cale - Dreaming in Vertigo

Malevich and Matisse

Daisy de Villeneuve's Run Colour Run

Jindřich Heisler, Czech surrealist

Chris Ofili - For the Unknown Runner

Martin Creed's Work 850

Art of Atheltics (4): Daisy de Villeneuve's Run Colour Run

Designer/illustrator Daisy de Villeneuve has produced a series of portraits for her Great North Run Culture commission, Run Colour Run. They were inspired by photographs of people in and about the Run in 2012: 'I went around with my camera and I took photos of anyone I thought looked interesting. So, I’ve taken pictures of a whole range of people – not just the athletes and participants, but the hospitality staff, security, the Red Arrows, event organisers, people with their families, kids cheering on their dads, people in costumes, different characters that stood out to me. A lot of these will show up in my portraits.”

The portraits include Canadian paralympian Josh Cassidy, who has won the wheelchair race at the Great North Run three times (unfortunately he did not finish this year due to mechanical problems).

Josh Cassidy

Cassidy and US sprinter and Olympic silver medallist Ryan Bailey came to see their portraits at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle when the exhibition opened. It's on there until November 3rd (admission free)

Ryan Bailey

Since 2005, a culture programme linked to the Great North Run has been commissioned every year, with works linking art and sport.

See also in the Art of Running series:

Jindřich Heisler, Czech surrealist
Chris Ofili - For the Unknown Runner
Martin Creed's Work 850

The Art of Athletics (3): Jindřich Heisler

Jindřich Heisler (1914-1953) was a Czech surrealist poet and artist. Half Jewish, he hid out out at a friends' apartments in Prague for much of the 1940s Nazi occupation to avoid deportation to the death camps. During this time he produced a diverse body of work in very challenging circumstances - interestingly a couple of the images he produced feature running figures. As he was rarely able to go outside I wonder whether for him the runner represented freedom and/or his condition as a man on the run.

Untitled [Running figured pursued by bird], from De la même farine (From the Same Dough), 1944. Gelatin silver print with hand-applied color.

In this untitled work from c. 1943,  Heisler has attached a spring/toy foot to a photograph of an athlete  - making a kind of prosthetic leg.

Art of Athletics (2): 'For the Unknown Runner' by Chris Ofili

A number of British artists were commissioned to design posters for the 2012 London Olympics, including Chris Ofili who came up with 'For the Unknown Runner'.

Chris Ofili designed it in his studio in Trinidad. In an interview with film maker Tracy Assing at the time he said that the runner wasn't supposed to represent anyone in particular but 'just the idea of somebody running from something or to something'.  He did though say that he was inspired by an image of Usain Bolt and another of a trophy vase from the ancient Olympics.

Ofili reflected in the film on the connection between running and making art: 'the 100 metre sprint is like flight I suppose, trying to launch yourself into that series of moments but essentially living in the moment where it's one step after the next, and trying to get some way beyond that moment so you are completely free of what you've done at any given instance... I think sometimes trying to make art's a bit like that where you're basically letting go, where you're offering something for that moment and trying to let go and move forward and not be burdened by your own accumulations'.

The Art of Athletics (1): Martin Creed's Work 850

Tate Britain in London is currently featuring Phantom Ride, a video work by the artist Simon Starling that digitally recreates some of the iconic art works that have featured in the Duveen galleries - the central space that visitors enter when they come through the riverside entrance (though due to building works that entrance is not in use at the moment). At one moment in Phantom Ride, a figure appears and runs down the empty gallery.

This alludes to a work that was performed in the gallery in 2008 - Martin Creed's Work 850. If we want to talk about art and running, where better to start than with a work that solely features just that: people running, in an art gallery. For eight hours a day, every day, from July until November 2008 Creed arranged for runners to sprint the 86 metres of the gallery. After a 15 second pause, another runner would appear and do the same.

Runners, many of them recruited through Athletics magazines and clubs, were paid £10 an hour to work in teams over a four hour shift, with sprints interspersed with rests. Interviewed at the time, Creed explained: "As soon as I was asked [to tackle the Duveen Galleries] I immediately thought of people running through them.. I wanted to use the whole space, instead of putting an object in it. The runner is like a guide showing you the whole space... Running is a beautiful thing. You do it without a pool, or a bike; it is the body doing as much as it can on its own'.

He also said: “I like running. I like seeing people run and I like running myself… running is the opposite of being still. If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s an example of aliveness.” (Tate Press Release, 30 June 2008).

The piece provoked predictable 'but is it art?' outrage in the Daily Mail. But that gallery has always featured statues and other representations of the human form, so why not actual humans engaged in another fine art, the art of running?