I also owe a lot to football and it’s something I’m always willing to discuss, play or watch. It’s even more appropriate to discuss today and even into the summer. In a matter of hours, over in Moscow, the Champions League Final kicks off featuring an all-English match up of Chelsea FC and Manchester United FC (I’m rooting for Man U). In a matter of a few weeks (17 days to be exact), the European Championships begin, sadly without England, but I’ll be rooting for the Orange Crush (that would be the Dutch National Team) and glued to every game I can catch on TV.
Every two years I become transfixed with the World Cup or Euro Championships – and it is heaven. I remember beautiful goals as if they were works of art and the players that create them (Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and Zidane) like artists – but I excitedly digress and this is where I bring this post back to planet art museum. With all this football on my mind, I decided to research contemporary works of art and artists influenced by or featuring this sport.

Here’s what I found:

Local artist Artur Silva is pretty cool and not because I can have a conversation about Gordon Banks with him. Artur is Brazilian which means he has the luxury of supporting some of the best teams in the history of the game. I remember watching the 2002 World Cup game between England and Brazil in a bar as Brazilian fans samba’d around me celebrating their victory. It was painful loss for an England fan, but it really opened my eyes to the beauty of Brazilian soccer. Around the same time, I came across this piece by Artur Silva and it brought back so many memories of Pele, the game, the history. So thank you to Artur for that.

I’ve written about it before, but I don’t mind beating a dead horse. Zinedine Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is an impressive cinematic work of art that depicts the beautiful game and one of the games greatest players ever, Zizou. Directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, it features stunning camera work (all 17 of them), a mesmerizing soundtrack by Mogwai and clever, thoughtful editing. Do whatever you can to find this video.

Fellow blogger Phillip sent this link to me ages ago and I went nuts. German artist Susken Rosenthal creates individual portraits of specific football matches by sketching and tracking the ball movement in real time. The result is similar to that of a seismographic drawing. To someone not familiar with soccer, it may not make sense. To me it’s a work of art.

And in short -

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco not only plays soccer but has also depicted it in some of his work. Check it out here.

Here’s an interesting piece by Brian Jungen that synthesizes Nike silver soccer balls made to resemble lava rock.

Turkish artist Omer Ali Kazma created a video installation on Turkish team, Galatasaray featuring footage from over 8 months of work. I would love to see this somehow. Can anyone help me out?

And that’s all I’ve got…for now. If you’ve made it this far and want to contribute any recommendations for contemporary artists and football, please leave me a comment.

In the meantime, enjoy this Maradona goal scored against England in the 1986 World Cup. Painful for me to watch, but quite possibly a work of art.

Slow blog day at IMA? You bet. Is it difficult to find facts about 80,000? Yep. But – this is going somewhere. IMA’s YouTube Channel will hit 80,000 views any day now, and I’m slightly torn about that. I’m convinced that those views have consisted of people truly interested in art. Feedback for our videos has been overwhelmingly positive, so in that respect, wow – thousands of people have experienced art from IMA’s collection, heard directly from artists, or discovered an interesting performance. We want more of these people and will continue to provide these experiences.

When IMA’s marketing and new media departments created the YouTube account in the summer of 2006, there were really no expectations. It was an experiment, a place for our content and free bandwidth. 18 months later and we all view it differently. We produce art content. We are focused on the stories artwork, an artist or exhibition can tell. And we really care about our viewers. If you search some of the most popular videos on YouTube, you are unlikely to find anything related to art or museums. 80,000 is impressive, especially for art content, but I really wish that number was higher.

How does an art museum compete in the YouTube arena? Should we be happy with our numbers, or is it realistic to expect more viewers, subscribers, friends, family, video comments, responses? I don’t know the answer to that. But I am certain we can’t compete with videos like Incredible Cuteness Overload.

Yes it’s cute. This one video has over 800,000 hits (not 80,000). We could produce something like this on squirrels. The IMA has lots of cute squirrels running around the campus – but don’t expect Incredible Cuteness Overload II from us any time soon. We will continue revealing stories about art or providing a realistic glimpse into the inner workings of an art museum. But we do want more of you to watch our videos. I’m just not quite sure how to do that.

So – 80,000, what do you think? Am I greedy for wanting more? Should we be pulling out all the stops to increase our viewers? And, I guess more importantly, would you want to watch a video on IMA’s cutest squirrel?

When it ended, we noticed the laptop was picking up a strong wireless signal. With the projector still running and the speakers playing crackly but audible audio, we seized the opportunity to show off our favorite YouTube videos to party goers, people walking their dogs, and unfortunate neighbors trying to sleep. It started with some clips from Flight of the Conchords (Business Time, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, If You’re Into It) and snowballed from there, with segments from Neg’s Urban Sports, Aleksey Vayner’s video resume, and Michael Cera’s parody, Impossible is the Opposite of Possible. The list could go on and on. Somewhere in the middle of this viral video film fest, I actually thought of the new IMA web site and YouTube channel.

Our YouTube channel is something that the marketing and new media departments (I’m part of new media) have been developing for the past year, steadily building subscribers (88, not bad) and 38, 271 video views (not that we’re counting). This is one of our attempts at providing our visitors and online community a new experience with art, the stories behind it and to prove we can be cool. So far it’s been a great experience, with a lot more to come. We’ve applied the same creativity and thought to this new web site.

Work on this site began two years ago and was designed with the visitor in mind, combining essential information with new online experiences, such as tagging (describing art in your own words), searching the collection (finding something amazing), digital content (blogging, more videos and soon, audio), and the chance to join us on myspace and flickr (who doesn’t love flickr?). We hope that everyone enjoys the design and some of our experiments. If for some reason you don’t, please feel free to leave comments on other IMA staff blogs.

The IMA will continue to experiment on this site. The success of these new digital tools largely depends on how you respond to our attempts. It’s a relationship we will not take for granted and based on your feedback; we hope to respond in a way that shows this.

So that’s it for now. If you want to reply with some of your favorite online videos, I would love to hear from you, in the meantime I’ll leave you with a quote from Michael Cera, “…you have to bring your determination, and your a-game, and your drive to the field and success will follow.”

We hope so, so stay tuned (now you have to watch that video).