On Sunday 11 July, it will be England vs Italy in the Euro 2020 Final football match at Wembley Stadium, so you might want to have your favourite football shirt close at hand.
While many ponder the burning question of the moment: ‘Is – or isn’t – football coming home?’, Max Siedentopf is busy answering another: ‘How do you make art for people who usually don’t like art?’
This question prompted the Namibian-German artist to orchestrate one of the most unusual collisions of worlds known to creativity. It began with a theory: those who avoid museums and galleries just might be in the same demographic as those who spend time watching football matches – an interesting (and possibly divisive) hypothesis.
FC Inter Milan
He needed a creative solution that would cater for both the most refined of art enthusiasts and the most dedicated of football fans. Attempting to score two goals with one ball, the Paintings League series was born – a marriage of classic football shirts and contemporary abstract art.
A creative homage to legendary team football shirts
The series – published in a new book by Hatje Cantz – pays homage to iconic football teams including Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Chelsea, Manchester United, and Barcelona by turning their team football shirts into acrylic-on-canvas colour-field paintings on canvas.
A conceptual artist, photographer, director, publisher and former creative director of the ‘unorthodox’ creative agency KesselsKramer, Max Siedentopf is well known for surreal interventions that are tricky to forget. This could be said for his piece Toto Forever. In the middle of the Namib desert, Siedentopf staged a sound installation consisting of six speakers plugged into an MP3 player with just one song on it – you guessed it, Toto’s Africa. Siedentopf said of the piece: ‘The song is put on loop and the installation runs on solar batteries to keep Toto going for all eternity.’
Galatasaray SK
Echoing the icons of abstract art
Back in the Paintings League, things are no less surreal. Stare for long enough, and the colour-field painting icons begin to emerge. At first glance, what appears to be a Frank Stella painting is, in fact, an Arsenal shirt. Elsewhere, an Ellsworth Kelly-esque formation turns out to be Manchester United, and we find literal parallel lines between Juventus and the work of Daniel Buren. But perhaps the most absurd and revelatory comparison of all might be an Agnes Martin-like grid emerging from a Barcelona shirt.
In this book, art aficionados can lose themselves in Siedentopf’s minimalist approach to abstract painting, while lovers of the beautiful game can admire their football team colours immortalised on canvas.
Whatever the result of the England vs Italy Euro 2020 Final, the long-term results of Paintings League remain to be seen, Siedentopf has proved that this distinctive art-versus-football experiment isn’t necessarily a game of two halves.
Left: Juventus FC. Right: Celtic FC, as featured in Paintings League, by Max Siedentopf, published by Hatje Cantz
Arsenal FC
AFC Ajax
Hertha BSC
Olympique de Marseille
Chelsea FC
Book cover of Paintings League, by Max Siedentopf, published by Hatje Cantz
INFORMATION
Max Siedentopf, Paintings League, € 20.00, Hatje Cantz. hatjecantz.de
-
Designer Marta de la Rica’s elegant Madrid studio is full of perfectly-pitched contradictionsThe studio, or ‘the laboratory’ as de la Rica and her team call it, plays with colour, texture and scale in eminently rewarding ways
-
‘Nothing just because it’s beautiful’: Performance artist Marina Abramović on turning her hand to furniture designMarina Abramović has no qualms about describing her segue into design as a ‘domestication’. But, argues the ‘grandmother of performance art’ as she unveils a collection of chairs, something doesn’t have to be provocative to be meaningful
-
A local’s guide to Los Angeles by defiant artist Fawn RogersOregon-born, LA-based artist Fawn Rogers gives us a personal tour of her adopted city as it hosts its sixth edition of Frieze
-
Era-defining photographer David Bailey guides us through the 1980s in a new tome not short of shoulder pads and lycraFrom Yves Saint Laurent to Princess Diana, London photographer David Bailey dives into his 1980s archive in a new book by Taschen
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits LondonArtist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
-
Inside Joan Didion’s unseen diary of personal relationships and post-therapy notesA newly discovered diary by Joan Didion is soon to be published. Titled 'Notes to John', the journal documents her relationship with her daughter, husband, alcoholism, and depression
-
Alice Neel’s portraits celebrating the queer world are exhibited in London‘At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World’, curated by Hilton Als, opens at Victoria Miro, London
-
‘You have to face death to feel alive’: Dark fairytales come to life in London exhibitionDaniel Malarkey, the curator of ‘Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley’ at London’s Alison Jacques gallery, celebrates the fantastical
-
Carsten Höller’s new Book of Games: 336 playful pastimes for the bold and the boredArtist Carsten Höller invites readers to step out of their comfort zone with a series of subversive games
-
Distracting decadence: how Silvio Berlusconi’s legacy shaped Italian TVStefano De Luigi's monograph Televisiva examines how Berlusconi’s empire reshaped Italian TV, and subsequently infiltrated the premiership
-
Inside the distorted world of artist George RouyFrequently drawing comparisons with Francis Bacon, painter George Rouy is gaining peer points for his use of classic techniques to distort the human form
