Short description:

This exciting and original book explores the multiple ways in which sport has been represented visually in the past, and provides a series of case studies that help scholars to exploit new sources and develop new insights into the history of sport.

It was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Long description:

This comprehensive, novel and exciting interdisciplinary collection brings together leading international authorities from the history of sport, social history, art history, film history, design history, cultural studies and related fields to explore the ways in which visual culture has shaped, and continues to impact upon, our understanding of sport as an integral element within popular culture. Visual representations of sport have previously been little examined and under-exploited by historians, with little focused and rigorous scrutiny of these vital historical documents. This study seeks to redress this balance by engaging with a wide variety of cultural products, ranging from sports stadia and monuments in the public arena, to paintings, prints, photographs, posters, stamps, design artefacts, films and political cartoons. By examining the contexts of both the production and reception of this historical evidence, and highlighting the multiple meanings and social significance of this body of work, the collection provides original, powerful and stimulating insights into the ways in which visual material assists our knowledge and understanding of sport.

This collection will facilitate researchers, publishers and others with an interest in sport to move beyond traditional text-based scholarship and appreciate the powerful imagery of sport in new ways.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Table of Contents:

Preface: New Agendas and New Questions for the History of Sport   1. Prologue: Extending Study of the Visual in the History of Sport  2. Imaging Sport at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art (1929?37)  3. Reading Photographic Portraits of Australian Women Cyclists in the 1890s: From Costume and Cycle Choices to Constructions of Feminine Identity  4. Enveloping the Past: Sport Stamps, Visuality and Museums  5. Pedal-Powered Avant-Gardes: Cycling Paintings in 1912?13  6. Stadiums: Architecture and the Iconography of the Beautiful Game  7. The Football Ground and Visual Culture: Recapturing Place, Memory and Meaning at Ayresome Park  8. ?We Make a Big Effort to Bring Out the Ladies?: Visual Representations of Women in the Modern American Stadium  9. From Melbourne Cooper to Match of the Day and Mo-Cap: Motion as Metaphor and Metaphysics in Animated Sport  10. Contesting the Master Narrative: The Arthur Ashe Statue and Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia  11. Mapping America?s Sporting Landscape: A Case Study of Three Statues  12. The Palio Banner and the Visual Culture of Horse Racing in Renaissance Italy  13. Hasta la Victoria (Deportista) Siempre: Revolution, Art, and the Representation of Sport in Cuban Visual Culture  14. ?Sport for Grown Children?: American Political Cartoons, 1790?1850  15. Liberation and Containment: Re-visualising the Eugenic and Evolutionary Ideal of the Fizkul?turnitsa in 1944  16. Seeing Your Way to Health: The Visual Pedagogy of Bess Mensendieck?s Physical Culture System  17. Sport and Spectatorship as Everyday Ritual in Ben Shahn?s Painting and Photography  18. Epilogue