Бучацкий В.П., Семёнова С.Д.

Восточно-Казахстанский государственный технический университет

им. Д. Серикбаева, Казахстан

ART AND SPORT IN MODERN MASS CULTURE

Since ancient times, people have been contemplating about the relationship of art and sport in culture. There were discussions, debates and myths on this issue, but one thing is certain: sport holds a prominent place in art and aesthetic culture.

In today's world artistic culture is a multilayered and heterogeneous phenomenon both in its nature and the ways of artistic expressiveness. Therefore, sport is increasingly represented by the synthetic reproduction of sporting and entertainment events. The current artistic trend integrates two sides: reality and festivity, fantasy and everyday life. Artistic culture acquires sport borrowings and thereby expands the boundaries of art. Expanding the boundaries of artistic culture through aesthetic assimilation of sport enriches it with new and sometimes unusual components of different arts. This interaction of different artistic forms sets them new aesthetic and artistic tasks, which further define their development in expression of different sports (such as gymnastics, synchronized swimming, figure skating, etc.).

A spectacular value is extremely important for any performance, especially a sporting event. Competitiveness, which is the essence of professional sports, increases the meaning of the event and attaches importance to artistic and aesthetic solutions. Thus, sport is obviously a part of modern society’s artistic culture, and the question is how it relates to one or another part of the culture.

The seamless integration of sport into the modern world’s culture is a qualitatively new aesthetic and artistic phenomenon which associates with the renewing art and seeks the new ways of converging with it. Understanding the principles of integration of sport and art reveals both the secrets of further development of sport and the features of modern art.

In sport expressiveness means accurate and efficient performance of a physical exercise. Its artistic element is conditioned by the need to impress the judges and the spectators as they evaluate an athlete’s performance. In other words, a technical value is a priority in sport.

In art expressiveness means a spectacular and meaningful representation of reality (sports practices in this case) and an artist’s ideological and emotional attitude to what they create.

In terms of differences, the important point is the criteria for assessing the performance of an athlete and an actor. A professional athlete gets the highest score for his self-control, steadiness and concentration.

All these qualities would be ruinous for an actor: to be recognized for professionalism he needs to throw out his emotions creating a scenic image in the context of dramatic action.

So, art and sport have a lot of differences in terms of their content, features, and how a person’s activity is characterized. Recently we can hear more and more often that many sports are, if not quite art, but very close to it. Let’s find out what sport and art have in common.

First of all, sport and art have long been rivals in popularity. Their attractiveness depends on a high level of fitness and aesthetic significance that define their content and arouse interest.

The aesthetic value peculiar to both of them is the unifying principle which makes an athlete and an artist act and create according to the laws of beauty and express it by means available to each of them. Both sport and art are the demonstration of a person’s emotional, physical, and intellectual abilities.

Spectacular achievements in these spheres of culture are impossible without a talent, because this is not the kind of activity where one can only be disciplined and middling. This is a world of discovery, experimentation, creativity and fearlessness. Most importantly, both an athlete and an artist must possess their individual style and manner, a personal quality mark which guarantees not only the originality but also the result. Watching athletes before the start and actors before the performance we see how they prepare, get in the mood, and transform in their own way. An athlete tries to catch the pace, get into the rhythm and merge with it in a single spur. An actor tries to feel the artistic image and to merge with it in order to express it. Only artistic and sporting activities can cause people’s emotional reaction, and make us feel as if we were in the athlete’s or actor’s shoes.

But the most important and undeniable thing that these two culture phenomena share is humanistica; both sport and art express the modern humanistic ideal in their sensory and graphic images, though they do it by different means.

As we have already mentioned, the aesthetic value is major and decisive in art, but in sport it is a necessary condition for achieving results. It is only true for some sports (as sports are diverse): namely, figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, i.e. sports the very nature of which lies in synthetic interaction of different arts and sports. These arts are the synthesis of dance, drama, music and other arts. If we try to reproduce the full artistic picture of the world, we can clearly see that the tendency to convergence of certain arts is natural.

Sport forms a new aesthetic and artistic phenomenon of modern mass culture: sport and entertainment shows, sporting celebrations, the Olympics (opening and closing ceremonies which are performed like dramatized shows). All of these innovative forms of sporting events can be considered a new kind of spectacular art and entertainment, the kind which possesses an important quality - the quality of artistry.

In conclusion, we’d like to note that the impact of sport on artistic culture is a recognized fact as it occupies an increasingly prominent place in it, but there is lack of scientific research in artistic trends in sports. Although a lot has been written about professional and Olympic sports, modern mass sport, and moreover, the innovative manifestation of sport and art’s union haven’t been researched enough yet.

References:

1. Arnold P.J. Sport, the Aesthetic and Art: Further Thoughts / P.J. Arnold – British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol.XXXVIII, No. 2 May 1990;

2. Сараф М.Я. Эстетика спорта / М.Я. Сараф – М., Знание, 1978