Sport and Art explores relationship of sport to art. It does not argue that sport is one of the arts, but rather that sport and art hold common ground. Both are ways in which humans confront philosophical challenges, though they do this through very different media. While art deploys sensual media such as paint or sound, sport is the pursuit of a physical challenge at which the athlete may fail. This is to propose, in an argument that has its roots in Hegel’s aesthetics, that sport may be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, such as the nature of human freedom, fate and chance, and even our sense of space and time. This argument is developed by proposing the concept of a ‘sportworld’, an ‘atmosphere of theory’ and a ‘knowledge of history’ through which an event is interpreted and thereby constituted as sport. Ultimately, Sport and Art argues that in order to be truly appreciated, sport must be understood within a modernist aesthetics. That is to say that sport is not about beauty, but rather about the struggle to find meaning in sporting triumph and crucially sporting failure. This book was published as a special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

Upon first consideration, sport and art seem to occupy separate, even opposing, realms--sport, associated with physical prowess, and art, with the highest reaches of the human mind. But because sport is such a powerful metaphor for so many human experiences, it has found its way into artistic traditions all over the world. Part One of this book provides a basic understanding of sport as symbol. Part Two gives attention to animals as adversaries and traces the origins of sporting art back to the hunt. Part Three considers humans competing against humans in combat sports, ball games, stick-and-ball games, and racquet sports, as well as in warfare. Part Four concentrates on contesting with oneself in races and sports of grace and beauty such as gymnastics, figure skating and ice dancing. The book concludes with a discussion of the athlete's relationships to society.

The Art of Sport captures moments of action, drama and skill from the world of sport. It gives an all-inclusive taster from the world's sporting circuit, showcasing spectacular, bizarre and stunning images from the world of sport. The book offers a fascinating selection of sports pictures taken by Reuters photographers who have had the vision and ability to see and capture extraordinary sporting moments. This collection comprises a sporting story with many threads: victory and defeat, natural skill, ability and hard work, beauty, strength and courage, joy and crushing disappointment - and offers some of the most clever and beautiful sporting photographs that you will ever see. The Art of Sport sets each photograph in context, outlining the circumstances behind the image: how the photographers came to be there at that moment and how they managed to document them. It showcases the two essential characteristics of the top photojournalis - a nose for a sporting story and an eye for a beautiful photograph.

This book compares two major leisure activities – watching sport and engaging with art. It explores a range of philosophical questions that arise when sport and art are placed side by side: The works of Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Mozart have continued to fill playhouses, galleries and concert halls for centuries since they were created, while our interest in even the most epic sporting contests fades after just a few years, or even a single season. What explains this difference? Sporting contests are merely games. So why do sports fans attach such great importance to whether their team wins or loses? Do sporting contests have meaning in the way works of art do? Beauty is a central value in art. Is it important in sport? What role does morality play in sport and art? What value do sport and art contribute to the world and to the meaning of people’s lives?

The very first book about sports in Czech art of the 20th and 21st centuries reveals a surprising fact. A long list of Czech artists have addressed the subject of sports to varying degrees?painters, sculptors, and printmakers as diverse as Milos Jiránek, Jan Preisler, Emil Filla, Kamil Lhoták, Jirí Kolár, Theodor Pistek, Michael Rittstein, Jirí Sozanský, and Frantiska Skála. Divided into twelve chapters, the book showcases the fundamental methods and techniques used by artists in an attempt to faithfully depict athletes? dynamic movement and the atmosphere at sporting events. We also encounter legendary Czech athletes such as runner Emil Zátopek, ice hockey player Ivan Hlinka, and soccer player Josef Masopust, whose accomplishments are celebrated in public sculptures.

WHO ARE THEY AND WHY DO THEY DO IT? –these men who dedicate themselves to building bodies like Hellenistic statues; who crisscross the world competing for titles as grandiose yet as publicly uncelebrated (Mr. America, Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia) as their gargantuan physiques; whose daily lives are as rigidly defined and regulated by their obsession to mold the ideal body as any other master athlete's is towards perfecting his craft. Yet, rather than the public acclaim that normally follows an athletic triumph, only their fellow muscle men know who they are and know the price they have paid to win their incredible bodies. Novelist Charles Gaines and photographer George Butler have spent the last two years trying to capture the essence of this strange, joyful, exotic world: “We have been to quite a few places tracking bodybuilders, seeing contests and putting together the materials here. If we felt at times a little like 19th-century explorers –like Doughty, perhaps, off trekking through Arabia –it was because we found bodybuilding to be as primeval and unmapped as parts of Labrador. Nobody, we discovered, had been back into it to send a report on what it was like. This struck us then as peculiar, and it still does.