Prologue: Extending Study of the Visual in the History of Sport

Abstract

This paper highlights the value of images and materiality associated with sport in the past, and explores the range of sociocultural practices associated with them. It provides a critique of the neglect of such sources by many historians and notes that interest is now substantially growing in visuality and visual material. It emphasises the huge breadth and depth of sports-related evidence that can now be accessed, from stamps to stadiums and from posters to sports paraphernalia. It then examines the multiplicity of methodologies that can potentially be used to exploit the visual, its sites of production and sites of reception and seeing.

Keywords:

• visual
• sport
• visual methodologies
• materiality
• history
• materiality

Notes

 1. Hardy et al., ‘The Material Culture of Sport’, 128.

 2. Mitchell, Art and the Public Sphere, introduction.

 3. Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 171.

 4. Booth, The Field, 98–9.

 5. Brown, ‘The Modern Romance of Mountaineering’.

 6. Boddy, Boxing, 381.

 7. Mangan, ‘Icon of Monumental Brutality’.

 8. Landry, Noble Brutes; Flannery and Leech, Golf Through the Ages.

 9. Bergan, Sports in the Movies; Poulton and Roderick, Sport in Films.

10. Wannell, ‘Pregnant with Anticipation’.

11. Wingfield, Sport and the Artist; Kühnst, Sports: A Cultural History. Hatt, ‘Muscles, Morals, Mind’; Berger, Man Made; Doezema, George Bellows.

12. For conference proceedings see Daniel, Actes du XII Colloque International.

13. Budy et al ., Euphoria and Exhaustion.

14. O'Mahony, Sport in the USSR.

15. Andrews and Stirling, ‘Pop Goes the World’; Huggins, ‘The Visual, Death and Spot’; and Reiss, ‘American Sport, Celebrity and Painting’. See http://www.nassh.org/NASSH_CMS/files/NASSH_2010-proceedings.pdf. Phillips et al., ‘Broadening Horizons in Sport History’.

16. Moore, ‘Sports Heritage and the Re-imaged City’.

17. Vamplew, ‘Facts and Artefacts’; Vamplew, ‘Taking a Gamble’.

18. Macdonald, A Companion to Museum Studies.

19. Illeris, ‘Museums and Galleries as Performative Sites’.

20. Baker, Contesting Identities; King and Leonard, Visual Economies in Motion; Poulton and Roderick, Sport in Films; Briley et al., All Stars and Movie Stars; Streibel, Fight Pictures; Huggins, ‘Projecting the Visual’; McAnnalen and Crossan, ‘Portraying the Irish at Play’.

21. Bale, Imagined Olympian; Bale, ‘Partial Knowledge’.

22. Timmers, A Century of Olympic Posters.

23. Jackson, ‘Sporting cartoons and Cartoonists’; Constanzo, ‘One Can’t Shake Off the Women’.

24. See for example, Thompson, Half Time; Burdock and Baier, A Century of Golf Cards.

25. Jackson, ‘The Baines Card and its Place in Boys’ Popular Culture'.

26. Guttmann, The Erotic in Sports, 161.

27. Kosut, ‘An Iron Fad’.

28. Vertinsky and McKay, Disciplining Bodies in the Gymnasium.

29. Dyreson, ‘Cathedrals of Sport’; Bale, ‘The Changing Face of Football’.

30. Inglis, Engineering Archie.

31. Smith, ‘Frozen Fists in Speed City’; Huggins, ‘Death, Memorialisation and the Victorian Sporting Hero’, Woodridge, ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’.

32. Rose, Visual Methodologies.

33. Deuchar, Sporting Art in Eighteenth Century England.

34. Phillips, Deconstructing Sport History.

35. Huggins, ‘The Sporting Gaze’.

36. Burke, Eyewitnessing, 81.

37. Osmond, ‘Photographs, Materiality and Sport History’.

38. Oriard, King Football, 19.

39. Ibid., 17.

40. Tegel, ‘Leni Riefenstahl: Art and Politics’; McFee and Tomlinson, ‘Riefenstahl's Olympia.’