Wolfgang Welsch 
Sport — Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art? 
Introductory Remarks 
I. Contemporary sport: Just aestheticization, or even the status of art? 
,Aestheticization' — the topic of this symposium - is a complex issue. It requires, 
above all, differentiation and a close look at the phenomena concerned -
instead of rushing to wholesale judgments. Having written broadly about the 
issue in recent years,11 thought it appropriate to present a case study here. I 
chose sport - contemporary sport, because it obviously represents a striking 
example of today's aestheticization of the everyday. My intention was to analyze 
the aestheticized constitution of postmodern sport. 
However, when I talked my ideas over with a friend, she asked: Why don't 
you go further and consider sport to be art? My immediate response was 
negative. Intuidvely it seems clear that sport isn't art. Most people would agree 
with the idea that contemporary sport is highly aesthetic; but very few - if any 
- would say that sport is art. 
But when I started arguing against sport's potential art status, I found 
myself - to my surprise - in ongoing trouble. For every argument which came 
to my mind, I found a better counter-argument. Step by step the conventional 
arguments turned out to be unconvincing and insufficient. Instead I got more 
and more convinced that sport can, for very good reasons, be viewed as art. 
The following considerations are a report and result of these reflections. 
My hunch is that the modern transformations of the concept of art in 
particular allow sport's to be viewed as art, and no longer allow this to be 
denied. So, in the foreground, the following reflections are about sport, while 
in the background they pertain to the concept of art. 
1 Cf. in par t icular my »Aestheticization Processes: Phenomena , Distinctions and 
Prospects«, in: Undoing Aesthetics (London: Sage, 1997), 1-32. 
Filozofski vestnik, XX (2/1999 - XIVICA), pp. 213-236. 213 
Wolfgang Welsch 
2. Phenomenal and conceptual transformations — 
the possibility and admissability of novel categorizations 
Of course, if the structure and concept of sport, of the aesthetic, of art 
were invariant, then sport could not be viewed as art - except mistakenly. But 
then it could not even be considered as aesthetic. For traditionally - and for 
understandable reasons-i t was not. It was considered to be more of an ethical 
enterprise, with the ethical being understood as being opposed to the aesthetic. 
So sport's shift to the aesthetic already demonstrates that we are not dealing 
with invariant structures here. Hence a further shift of sport to the artistic is 
not impossible in principle. Such an occurence, however, would presuppose 
phenomenal as well as conceptual changes - with respect both to sport's 
constitution and the concept of art. 
In the course of history it has often been the case that something originally 
not labelled as art later came to be considered as such and is in the meantime 
quite naturally viewed in this way. Artefacts - of occidental or other cultures 
-which were designed for ritual purposes were later designated as art. When 
you attend an auction of Indian art at Sotheby's none of these precious objects 
was originally meant to be art and yet they are quite naturally considered as 
such today. The concept of art is a flexible — and voracious - one. 
So in order to answer fairly the question as to whether sport can be viewed 
as art, we have to take into account the flexibility of the concepts involved and 
to analyze whether phenomenal and conceptual changes might justify this 
claim. In the following I will try to argue for this claim. - A last remark 
beforehand: in my analysis I will focus on high level sport and take it as a 
phenomenon incorporating both the athletes' and the spectators' point of view. 
I. Sport's Shift from Ethics to Aesthetics 
1. Ethics as constituting the traditional framexuork of sport 
Let me start by considering sport's contemporary shift from the ethical 
to the aesthetic. In earlier times, sport was praised as demonstrating and 
realizing the domination of the body by the mind and will. Sport was a kind 
of profane triumph of the metaphysical conception. Man was to be governed 
by mind and, to do this, had to subjugate the body's weakness and desires. 
Sport was to discipline the body and to make it fit to support the mind and its 
ends. In this sense Hegel praised the Greek Olympic games as be ing 
demonstrations of freedom in transforming the body into an »organ of the 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
spirit«.2 In modern times, sport was praised because of its benefits for self-
control or for heightened productivity. The ideological formula read »Sport 
builds character«. But already in 1971 a sport study found no evidence at all 
for diis claim and recommended »If you want to build character, try something 
else«.3 Today, faced by athletes like the basketball player Dennis Rodman -
who, significantly enough, published a book entitled »Bad As I Wanna Be« -
nobody can believe in sport's affinity with ethics any more.4 
2. Shift to aesthetics 
a. Well-known developments 
Instead sport has developed striking new affinities with aesthetics. This is 
obvious from the new style of sport clothing (some athletes, like Carl Lewis, 
have in the meantime even become professional fashion designers), the 
increased attention to the aesthetic element in performance (even the 
alteration of rules today is often motivated by aesthetic considerations), 
through to the spectators' aesthetic delight —sport having become a show for 
the amusement of the entertainment society. 
b. From the subjugation to the celebration of the body 
The most revealing point, however, is the new relationship to the body. 
Previously, so long as the mind was to be the commanding master and the 
body the obedient slave, the triumph of an iron will over the body was praised; 
today nobody would employ this rhetoric any more. Sport has, on the contrary, 
turned into a celebration of the body. 
Not only do we admire the female and male athletes' perfect bodies, the 
athletes themselves tend to exhibit them. After Linford Christie's victories 
didn't we always wait for the moment when he lowered his running suit to the 
waist, revealing his impressive shoulder, chest and stomach muscles? This 
dotted the i of his victory. And who could fail to have admired Merlene Ottey's 
grace and beauty - and therefore have regretted that she never won an 
Olympic gold medal? (But Gail Devers isn't bad either.) 
But what is perhaps more important is the following: aesthetic perfection 
2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, in: Werke 
(Frankfur t /Main : Suhrkamp, 1986) vol. 12, 298. 
3 Bruce C. Ogive and Thomas A. Tutko, »Sport: If You Want to Build Character, Try 
Someth ing Else«, Psychology Today, October 1971, 61-63. 
4 Dennis Rodman (with Tim Keown), Bad As I Wanna Be (New York: Delacorte Press, 
1996). 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
is not incidental to sporting success, but intrinsic to it. What is decisive for the 
sporting success, is perfect performance. And it is this feature, above all, which 
is aesthetically appreciated in sport. We admire the elegance of a high-jumper 
clearing the bar or a runner's power towards the finish - and this is why we 
enjoy looking at these bodies during as well as after the event, in order, say, 
to understand better their achievements or to be surprised that the runner 
shows so little sign of exertion after having crossed the finish line. In this sense 
we, as spectators, are right to focus on the body; and athletes are right in seeking 
perfection of their body and in demonstrating this both when performing and 
when exhibiting it. In sport the aesthedc and the functional go hand in hand. 
c. Parallels with the original project of aesthetics 
The new emphasis on the body and sport's shift from the ethical to the 
aesthetic seems to me to be of great interest - also with respect to the 
professional aestheticians' reflections. For aesthetics, when first established 
as a philosophical discipline by Baumgarten, strove for an emancipation of 
the body and the senses. Of course, this intention was inscribed within an 
epistemological perspective: it was to improve our sensory capacity for 
cognition. But under this epistemological cover aesthetics obviously tended 
to free the body and the senses from old metaphysical constraints. And 
Baumgarten himself became increasingly aware of (or was increasingly 
prepared to point out) the far-reaching consequences of his project, which 
indeed aimed at a radical cultural change, with the body and the senses 
becomingjust as important as intellect and reason. 
However, the times, it seems, were not prepared for this. The subsequent 
transformation of aesthetics into a philosophy of the arts is an indication of 
this. It reversed the critical impulse of aesthetics, fell back on the metaphysical 
pattern, and once again declared our sensory capacities to be an organ of the 
spirit - this time drawing on purported evidence from the arts. Aesthetics 
became an enterprise of cultural discipline again, which instead of bringing 
to bear the rights of our sensory capacity, turned against sensory experience 
and widely made the »war against matter« its (declared or concealed) maxim.5 
5 So Schiller, for instance, in his conception of what he paradoxically named an »aesthetic 
culture« (Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, trans. 
R. Snell, Bristol: Thoemmes 1994, here 23rd Letter, 112), called sensory exper ience a 
»dreadful foe« which is to be »fought« against (ibid.); he praised the mechanical and 
fine artist for not hesitating »to do [...] violence« to mat ter (ibid., 4th Letter, 32), and 
declared »the real artistic secret of the master« to consist in »his annihilating the material 
by means of the form« (ibid., 22nd Letter, 106). Similarly, Hegel was to allow the sensory 
aspects in the work of art to appear only »as surface and semblance of the sensory« 
(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Asthetik, ed. Friedrich Bassenge, 2 vols, F r a n k f u r t / 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
So what is occurring today in sport's emphasis on the body in a way 
reinstates the original - and subsequentiy lost- intention of aesthetics. Another 
attempt at the emancipation of the body is being made. Contemporary sport 
is, with respect to the body, clearly an emancipatory rather than a disciplinary 
enterprise. Foucault's perspective on modernity's disciplinary strategies might 
apply to modern sport, but it no longer does so to postmodern sport. 
d. The erotic element 
Today's uncovering of the erotic element in sport, in contrast to its 
traditional oppression, is another case in point. According to the traditional 
disciplinary model, sport was associated with ascesis.6 As sport was to serve to 
keep bodily desires in check, its inherent erotic connotations were to be kept 
quiet too. Today they are allowed to come to the fore. Contemporary sport is 
one of the spheres where the intrinsic relationship between the aesthetic and 
the erotic is allowed to manifest itself. 
e. Sport and health 
A fur the r example for sport's shift from an ethical to an aesthetic 
perspective is health. For a long time sport was said to enhance health. This 
was unders tood as an ethical aim, because a healthy body would, on a 
metaphysical view, ideally serve our spiritual tasks and would, on a modern 
view, serve the fulfilment of our working duties and thus match the new ethics 
of economic efficiency. 
But the gap between this ideology which connects sport with health and 
what's actually happening is more than obvious. Modern high performance 
Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt n.d., vol. 1, 48), art bringing forth »from the sensory 
side, intentionally, only a shadow world of shapes, tones and intuitions« (ibid., 49). 
11 We should no t forget , however, that the English term 'sport ' - in contrast, say, to the 
old Greek term 'gymnastics' - originally had a hedonistic meaning. The word 'sport ' 
originated in the mid four teenth century and, until the end of the seventeenth century, 
designated 'pleasant pastime' , 'entertainment ' , 'amusement ' , 'recreation', 'diversion', 
' t aking one ' s own p leasure ' (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical 
Principles, ed. Lesley Brown, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, vol. 2, 2999). In the late 
sixteenth century, it even had the particular sense of 'lovemaking', designating sexual 
intercourse viewed as a game (ibid.). In Shakespeare's Othello, for example, Jago says 
when vilifying Desdemona that »the blood is made dull with the act of sport« (11,1,230). 
»Venus sport« was a c o m m o n expression at that time. Only later did the concept of 
sport shift f r om pleasure to discipline. Nietzsche was, in this respect too, an exception, 
when he called »sexual love [...] a kind of sport« (Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene 
Fragmente. Herbst 1885 bis Anfang 1889, in: Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke. Kritische 
Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, eds Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari , Munich: 
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980, vol. 12, 482 [autumn 1887]). 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
sport is an enterprise which systematically produces young invalids. Take Marc 
Girardelli as an example, who with five overall World Cup wins was the most 
successful skier ever. In the course of his career he underwent knee surgery 
fourteen times. When he got up in the morning he had to exercise for half an 
hour in order to be able to walk in a straight line. Already at the height of his 
success he was officially acknowledged as a 30 percent invalid. Today no high 
ranking decathlete can realistically hope ever to be completely free of injury 
when going into a competition and the injury rate of soccer players is known 
to everyone. High performance sport and health simply don ' t go together.7 
But now, it seems, I'm in trouble. Doesn't this tendency to produce 
invalids contradict my thesis that today's sport is an emancipat ion and 
celebration of the body? Doesn't sport rather ignore and destroy the body? 
Today's athletes are adopting a dif ferent attitude.8 They refuse to 
disregard the body. Mika Myllyla, the Finnish world champion in the 50 km 
cross-country race in 1997, Olympic champion in the 30 km in 1998 and world 
champion in the 10, 30 and 50 km in 1999, is a telling example. He practices 
a new type of training, rejecting the usual scientific training and coaching where 
a precise plan is established which one then has to follow, no matter how the 
body feels. He avoids this old-fashioned type of training which is still shaped 
by the ideology of mastering the body. Myllyla relies instead on his own 
knowledge and feelings. When he trains he listens to his body and tries to 
find out what it wants and needs. And he enjoys this new type of training. He 
even insists that for him »the greatest enjoyment comes from training, not 
from winning«.3 With this method he manages not to be exposed to injuries 
and to be extremely successful at the same time. This novel type of training 
respects the body and does away with the old ideology of mastering the body, 
which in most cases ended up in the Girardelli-trap. Many athletes see Myllyla's 
(and others') way as a promising model of future training. — The point is very 
important. Sport is changing one of its basic features. Whilst some people say 
that in today's sport everything is getting worse, in fact one of sport's most 
7 Already in 1928/29, Bertolt Brecht had stated: »Great sport begins long af ter it has 
ceased to be healthy« (Bertolt Brecht, »Die Krise des Sportes«, in: Werke, vol. 21, Berlin 
and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, Frankfur t /Main : Suhrkamp, 1992, 222-224, he re 223). 
8 In fact, the old claim that high per formance sport would improve heal th has - while 
this ideology dominated - always been mistaken. When a weight-lifter's heart increased 
in size through permanent over-exertion, this caused him lifelong problems, and many 
weight-lifters died significantly prematurely of hear t attacks. T h e f o r m e r anti-body 
ideology of sport simply hid this contradict ion. As the body was to be domina ted for 
'h igher ' goals, its repulsion was just no t to be taken seriously. 
9 Source: http:/ /www.slu.fi /hiihtoli i t to/myllyla.html. 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
threatening problems is solved. The new body-focus of sport engenders a new 
care for the body. 
* 
So in various aspects - from its aesthetic appearance and appreciation 
through to its emphasis on the body in performance, self-presentation and 
training - contemporary sport has largely turned aesthetic.10 
II. Modern Changes in the Concept of Art Allowing Sport to be Viewed as Art 
But this move to aesthetics represents only the uncontroversial part of 
my essay. What, however, is highly disputed is that for this reason - or others 
- sport could be viewed as art.11 So let me turn to this controversial claim which 
- to my own, initial surprise - I am now going to argue for. 
As I said before, the legidmacy- and even the plausibility - of this further-
reaching claim depends, first of all, on the concept of art one has. My main 
point is that during the twentieth century the concept of art has undergone 
10 A valuable case study of spor t ' s aesthetic status is: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht , »Die 
Schönheit des Mannschaftssports: American Football - im Stadion und im Fernsehen«, 
in: Medien - Welten - Wirklichkeiten, eds Gianni Vattimo and Wolfgang Welsch (Munich: 
Fink, 1998), 201-228. Cf. also Gunter Gebauer and Gerd Hort leder , »Die Epoche des 
Showspor ts« , in: Sport - Eros - Tod, eds. Gerd H o r t l e d e r and G u n t e r G e b a u e r 
(Frankfur t /Main : Suhrkamp, 1986), 60-87. 
11 T h e r e was already discussion of whether or not sport is art in the 1970s and 1980s. It 
was triggered by Pierre Frayssinet's investigation Le Sport parmi les Beaux-Arts (Paris 1968) 
and was con t inued above all in the English speaking world, with authors such as L.A. 
Reid (1970), P. Ziff (1974),J. Kupfer (1975), David Best (1979,1980,1985), S.K. Wertz 
(1984) and Chr is topher Cordner (1988) participating. The answer given was for the 
most part negative: in spite of numerous obvious parallels sport should not ultimately 
be seen as art. I do not want to go into these arguments in detail, but to note that 
obviously for sensitive minds a tendency towards sport's potential art status was already 
taking shape which in the meant ime has made its breakthrough. It is just that the 
reaction then was predominant ly academically cautious and conceptually conservative 
- a l though many arguments (for instance those of Roberts and Cordner against Best) 
might have suggested a d i f ferent outcome (cf. David Best, »The Aesthetic in Sport«, 
British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 14, no. 3, summer 1974, 197-221, reprinted in: Philosophic 
Inquiry in Sport, eds William J. Morgan and Klaus V. Meier, Champaign, 111.: H u m a n 
Kinetics, 2nd ed. 1995, 377-389; David Best, »Sport is Not Art«, Journal of the Philosophy 
of Sport, vol. XII, 1985, 25-40; Terence J. Roberts, »Sport, Art, and Particularity: The 
Best Equivocation«, in: Philosophic Inquiry in Sport, 415-424; Chris topher Cordner , 
»Differences Between Sport and Art«, ibid., 425-436). 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
transformations which open up new chances of sport's being viewed as art. I 
will discuss four aspects. Later, in the third section of this essay, I will have to 
explain how contemporary sport actually makes use of these new opportu-
nities. 
1. Art, instead of defining the aesthetic, has become an instance of the aesthetic 
Firstly, a reversal of the relationship between the artistic and the aesthetic 
is to be observed. Formerly, the artistic provided the basic definition of the 
aesthetic. The realm of the aesthetic was certainly broader than that of art, 
but the concept of art was meant to provide the core concept of the aesthetic. 
In recent times, however, things have changed. Now art is considered as just 
one province of the aesthetic - certainly still a particularly important one, but 
nonetheless just one. While art has lost its privileged definitional status for 
the aesthetic, this has rather been assumed by aisthesis,12 So the definition of 
the aesthetic is no longer to be taken from art, rather art's definition is to be 
established within the framework of the aesthetic: preferably, for instance, 
conceiving of art as an intensification of the aesthetic. 
An obvious consequence of this change is that now everything which is 
emphatically aesthetic has better chances of counting as art than before. For 
this reason sport, being a novel and obvious instance of the aesthetic, might 
well enter the predicational sphere of art. 
2. Modern art as striving for interpénétrations with life 
Many of modern art's variants strive to transcend the art sphere, to achieve 
interconnections with the sphere of life. The poles of this tendency are marked 
by attempts to draw elements of the everyday into the artwork (say through 
collage, montage) on the one hand, or by trying to dissolve the artwork within 
life on the other hand (think of the Living Theatre or of the claim that good 
art and design should be unnoticeable and invisible).13 
12 I have developed this in more detail in »Aesthetics Beyond Aesthetics: For a New Form 
to the Discipline« and in »Aestheticization Processes: P h e n o m e n a , Distinctions and 
Prospects«, in: Undoing Aesthetics, 78-102 and 1-32. 
13 Cf. Design ist unsichtbar, eds Helmuth Gsôllpointner, Angela Flareiter and Laurids Ortner 
(Vienna: Lôcker, 1981). - Remember in this context also the old Schillerean project 
of art's transformation into the »art of living« (»Lebenskunst«; Schiller, On the Aesthetic 
Education of Man in a Series of Letters, 15th Letter, 80) and Nietzsche's polemics »against 
the art of artworks »: this »so-called actual art, that of artruorks«, h e said, is »merely an 
220 
Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
Regrettably enough, modern art's striving for connections with the 
lifeworld often suffers from utter misunderstanding. After Joseph Beuys, during 
and after the documenta VII, planted seven thousand oaks in Kassel and its 
surroundings, his devoted followers today undertake to preserve every single 
one of these oaks and produce extensive documentation of what they indeed 
see as a very innovative artwork, but which they treat as an absolutely traditional 
one. What was meant to transform art into life and nature is - in a complete 
misunderstanding of Beuys's intention by these devotees - being fetched back 
into the realm of art. Understandably enough, it is above all the art market 
which still wants art to be a clear-cut concept; this serves to distinguish art and 
to make it a marketable product. But the marriage between art and market is 
tenable only at the cost of an ongoing disregard of modern art's own initiatives. 
Unfortunately, many theoreticians also follow the art market's demands rather 
than art's impulses; they eagerly try to establish a clear-cut concept of art -
whose only purpose today seems to consist in serving the market.14 
Wherever the art world definition of art remains binding, of course, 
nothing other than the items distributed by the art market has a chance of 
counting as art. Redistributions between art and sport then simply cannot occur. 
But if art's impulse to be transformed into life - which is one of the strongest 
impulses of modern art - is taken seriously, then aesthetic forms beyond the 
realm of art could be seen as corresponding to art's own initiative, and in this 
sense be appreciated as instances of a fulfilment of art's intention, as a novel 
kind of art which modern art's impulse gave birth to. - This is a second line 
which might allow us to consider contemporary sport as a major new candidate 
for ,art'. 
appendix«, no t »the actual«; one should not, as the artworld thinks, fit out a bad life 
with artworks, but deploy artistic energy directly for the improvement of life (Friedrich 
Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister. Zweiter Band, in: 
Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, 453 f. [1 174]). According to Nietzsche, artworks are 
legitimate only when also serving an art of life. 
14 And if a theory is ever p roposed which effectively questions the concept of art, then 
this theory can - paradoxically - be highly esteemed among art market people while 
its con ten t is no t taken at all seriously by them. Arthur Danto 's indiscernibility thesis 
would, taken literally, be disastrous for the art market - it states that there is simply no 
such thing as an 'artwork' , hence one cannot sell any. The only artworks, according 
to Danto, consist of interpretat ions (as developed by critics and philosophers, and by 
Ar thur Danto in the first place) - so at least books can still be sold. 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
3. The tendency towards a fraying of the arts 
A third aspect is modern arts' tendency to merge into one another. 
Adorno has described this as the fraying of the arts.15 »The borders between 
the artistic genres are flowing into one another , more precisely, their 
demarcation lines are fraying.«16 »It is as if the artistic genres, by negating their 
firmly outlined forms, were gnawing away at the concept of art itself.«17 Adorno 
interprets this fraying of the arts as a consequence of their attempt to escape 
their autonomy-centered ideological constitution, an attempt which he calls 
»the vital element of all actually modern art«.18 
This tendency to neutralize the borders of art — among its genres in the 
first place, but also between art and the everyday - is, of course, another reason 
why an entry of non-art into the realm of art becomes possible in principle. 
4. From, highbrow to lowbrow -
the advancement of art and aesthetics towards the popular 
The increasing insecurity about the borders of art leads to a fourth point: 
the revaluation of popular art. The distinction between high and low is 
increasingly being rejected - by art as well as by its aesthetic reflection. Pop 
Art was the decisive event in the field of arts, and, with respect to aesthetics, 
I'd like to remind you of Richard Shusterman's »defense of popular art« and 
his demonstration »that works of popular art do in fact display the aesthetic 
values its critics reserve exclusively for high art«.19 - This opening of the concept 
of art towards the popular clears a further path for the inclusion of sport, this 
highly popular aesthetic phenomenon, among the arts. 
15 T h e o d o r W. Adorno, »Die Kunst u n d die Künste«, in: Adorno , Ohne Leitbild: Parva 
Aesthetica (Frankfur t /Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 168-192. Cf. also Ar thur Dan to's m o r e 
recent descript ion of »contemporary artistic practice«: »It is a prac t ice in which 
painters no longer hesitate to situate their paintings by means of devices which be long 
to altogether different media - sculpture, video, film, installation, and the like« (Arthur 
C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton: Princeton 
University Press, 1997, XII). 
16 Adorno, »Die Kunst u n d die Künste«, 168. 
17 Ibid., 189. 
18 Ibid., 191. 
19 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art ( O x f o r d : 
Blackwell, 1992), 171 f. and 200. Shusterman points out in particular »that popular art 
has those formal qualities thought to dist inguish h igh ar t as aesthetic: uni ty and 
complexi ty , inter textual i ty and o p e n - t e x t u r e d polysemy, e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n a n d 
fo regrounded attention to medium« (ibid., 200). 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
* 
In this second section, I have pointed out four reasons why possibilities 
arise through the development of the modern concept of art itself for sport 
to access the notion of art. When, for something to be art, its aesthetic character 
is more important than a specifically artistic one; when art itself strives for 
transformation into phenomena of the everyday; when art tends to blur its 
borders; when, finally, the popular is increasingly being recognized as art -
then sport becomes a good new candidate for being viewed as art. 
III. Sport as Art 
Now let me turn to the decisive question: does sport actually make use 
of these possibilities? Does it fulfill at least some - and perhaps enough - of 
art 's criteria to be considered art? — From now on I will go through the 
common objections to sport's potential art status step by step in order to 
examine critically and refute them. 
1. Does sport — by aiming for victory -
lack art's requisite character as an end in itselfl 
One basic objection says that even if contemporary sport exhibits the four 
shifts mentioned, it can nevertheless not be art because it runs counter to two 
other basic conditions of art: its symbolic status and its being an end in itself. 
This objection is based on the assumption that sport is merely a profane 
activity aiming at victory. Hence sport falls short of symbolic meaning as well 
as of being an end in itself. — Let me discuss the various errors inherent in 
this apparently plausible line of thought. 
a. The symbolic status of sport as well as art 
Sport is as distant from ordinary life as is art. When Othello smothers 
Desdemona, this is a symbolic act, the actress will survive. Likewise sport's 
relationship to life is at most symbolic. Many sports originated from types of 
aggressive action in ordinary life, but being practised as sport, this remains 
only as a symbolic background to them. In sport die struggle is »raised to the 
level of imagination«.20 Or as Santayana put it: »Sport is a liberal form of war 
stripped from its compulsions and malignity.«21 
20 Cordner , »Differences Between Sport and Art«, 432. 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
This is why sport, viewed (and sometimes ironically assessed) from life's 
perspective of necessity, often appears absurd: Why do marathon runners 
enslave themselves so? Why do sporting marksmen compete with such 
embitterment when all they're shooting is useless clay pigeons and not real 
pigeons that one could roast afterwards? Isn't it simply idiotic to constantly 
drive in a circle at high speed (as Niki Lauda said when retiring from Formula 
One sport)? 
The following point also makes the difference between sport or art on 
the one hand and life on the other hand evident. If Othello were to carry on 
smothering someone in normal life, after having left the stage, he would be 
arrested, as would a linebacker who continued hurling all his weight into 
brusing tackles away from the football field in the streets. Sport as well as 
theater take place in particular spaces, separate from the everyday world. What 
the stage is to theater, the playing field, boxing ring, or the race track are to 
sport. Art as well as sport are, compared to life, symbolic activities in terms of 
their structure. — I will explain what comprises the symbolic nature of sport 
later on. 
b. Sport's oeuvre: the performance 
But another difference still seems to remain: sport is said to be about 
winning, while art is about the creation of an artwork. 
But let's be careful when talking about a ,work'. Of course, in painting 
works are produced which have an independent existence after the act of 
painting. Not so, however, in theater, dance or music — in the performing 
arts. Nor in sport: when the competition is over, garbage may remain but no 
work. 
Yet there is a different type of work implied in those artistic as well as in 
sporting performances: the performance itself. That painting produces a work 
in the sense of an object might make painting's status even dubious instead, 
for in doing this it does not (as it does in other respects) raise itself beyond 
the level of a craft to the higher level of art.22 Whereas the performing arts 
and sport do. This even makes them comparable to those activities which, ever 
since Aristode, have been considered to be our highest ones, precisely for the 
21 Ibid., 432. 
22 Hence in the past arts like painting and sculpture were pursued u n d e r the head ing 
»artes mechanicae«, that is alongside, for instance, agricul ture, i r onmongery and 
weaving. Indeed - precisely because what mat tered to t hem was the resultant p roduc t 
and n o t t he process - they were n o t c o u n t e d as »artes l iberales«. This or ig ina l 
classification can still be seen in the reliefs of the Florentine Campanile (representations 
f rom around 1340 and 1437-39): architecture, sculpture and paint ing figure amidst 
the mechanical arts - below the liberal arts which are represen ted above them. 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
reason that their proper work is immanent to the process and not something 
achieved at the end and remaining as a result, an outcome, a product, a work-
entity. Aristotle pointed out the difference between activities producing a work 
and those which constitute ends in themselves. The acts of seeing, reflecting 
or thinking have their end in themselves, not beyond, they are fulfilled in 
themselves.23 They are distinguished by the immanence of the work-which is 
nothing but the process itself — in the process. Here we are concerned with 
activities which are exemplary as ends in themselves. 
Sport, just as the performing arts, is of this type. The sporting performance 
has, above all, its end in itself. In principle it does not serve outer purposes.24 
Of course, all self-purposive activities can have outer effects too: thinking can 
make you a lonely person, musical performance can make you famous, and 
sport can make you rich. But it would be wrong to declare these secondary 
effects the primary thing and, so doing, to overlook these activities' inner 
character as an end in themselves, whose excellence is the condition for these 
outer effects being able to take place. Of course, all self-purposive activities 
can have outer effects too - thinking can make you a lonely person, musical 
performance can make you famous, and sport can make you rich - but the 
decisive point, which one should in no case omit is that these activities, in the 
first place, bear their sense in themselves, whatever the additional effects may 
be. 
Bearing this in mind we might be in a position to disprove the objection 
that sport is about winning whereas the arts are not. If,winning' means that 
one tries to do what one does as well as one ever can, then this is common to 
all these phenomena - to sport as well as to art. If,winning' implicitly connotates 
,money-making', then again this can apply to both of them. The main point, 
however, is that in sport the aim of winning cannot be reached directly but 
only through the sporting performance. It is the superiority of one's sporting 
performance that leads to victory. So the proper work of the athlete is in any 
case his or her performance, which then may result in a win.25 In this, it seems 
to me, sport and art are completely alike.20 
23 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX 6, 1048 b 18-36. 
24 Spor t ' s c h a r a c t e r as an e n d in itself is o f ten r ende red by emphasiz ing its play 
characteristic. 
25 A similar s tructure is typical for mountain climbing. The popular formula »the way is 
the goal« gives a good account of this. Sure, you want to get to the summit. But don ' t 
forget that you also have to get back down afterwards. The satisfaction arises f rom 
having d o n e all this well - no t jus t f rom having reached the top. Ultimately all the 
challenges of the route including the altitude of the summit are an integral part of the 
process, of the cl imber 's successful performance. 
26 T h e common objection to contemporary high level sport (in particular to basketball, 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
And, interestingly enough, many athletes today emphasize the value of 
performance more than that of winning. Even when they have lost, they can 
be very happy with their excellent performance. They did their best, and this 
is satisfying — though it was not enough to win. Sport is more about the best 
possible performance than about winning. And some athletes go even further. 
For them pure performance - that of training, which is exempt f rom 
competition and victory - brings the greatest enjoyment. As Mika Myllyla said: 
»Winning brings a feeling of success, it is a reward for a job well done, but 
the greatest enjoyment comes from training. Competition is not the main 
thing.«27 
2. Sporting performance: determined too much by its rules 
to be counted as art ? 
Another objection against sport's potential art status runs as follows: sport 
lacks creativity. Because it simply runs through fixed schemes within a strict 
set of rules. Art on the contrary problematizes and transcends rules. 
This is true. Art - and modern art in particular — does not simply follow 
a given set of rules but questions and changes the status of art and develops 
new paradigms, each of which may establish a peculiar set of rules for art's 
existence and meaning and for the artwork's construction as well as reception. 
This characteristic of art, its not being led by rules, was already expressed by 
the traditional formula of »Je ne sais quoi« and clearly comes to the fore through 
the modern prominence of reflective judgment . Sport, on the contrary, 
presupposes definitely established rules. As soon as ambiguities arise here — 
when, for instance, a hammer thrower suddenly wears ankle weights — the 
rules are added to. Art creates its rules, sport follows rules. 
a. Sport does not exhaust itself in following rules 
But does this mean that sporting performance does not contain an artlike 
potential at all? By no means. The performance is regulated, but not determined 
in every aspect by the respective rules. Great memorable competitions are 
soccer and other highly-paid sports) that the athletes only run af ter money is much 
too simple. Excellent performance is the indispensable condi t ion for whatever may 
follow f r o m it: a series of wins, e a r n i n g i m m e n s e a m o u n t s of m o n e y , o r b e i n g 
overexerted by permanent ly being the best. And this applies to sport as well as to art. 
The prospect of additional earnings may make tenors sing more of ten - bu t if the level 
of their per formance drops, so too does their reward. 
27 Source: http:/ /www.slu.fi /hiihtoli i t to/myllyla.html. 
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Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
such because something happened which went beyond the mere fulfilment of 
rules. If following the rules were everything, all competitions would have to 
be more or less the same. In actual competition and performance something 
more enters in: the event and occurrence, drama and contingency, good or 
bad luck, success or failure, surprise and excitement. These elements make 
the sporting event a particular and possibly unique one.28 — Taking a closer 
look at these surplus elements we will be able to discover the main reason for 
sport's artistic character. 
b. Fascination with the event 
Let us consider first the obvious parallel with die performing arts. While 
with painting or poetry what I said before holds (they establish rather than 
follow rules), theater or music constitute a different case: the actors or players 
are bound by the preestablished structure of the written play or the piece of 
music. Yet what makes their performance remarkable is not the rule-governed 
reproduction of the script or the composition, but the additional element of 
their performance, one which displays all kinds of personal skills, individual 
interpretation, and openness to the event they create (while creating it). None 
of this is straightforwardly determined by the given script or composition. It 
is these surplus elements which we appreciate and remember most. And whilst 
true for the performing arts, this is equally true for sport.29 
What we appreciate is what transcends the sphere of mere rule-fulfilment. 
Or rather what supervenes while the rules are being followed: the event's 
unforeseeable dynamics. Ideally, the rules provide good conditions for an event 
of this kind. Indeed they are designed and often adjusted in order to allow 
for the ultimately unforeseeable dynamics of the event. They are boundary 
condidons for possibly great sporting events. Take soccer as an example. During 
the last World Cup the rules for the match between Brazil and the Netherlands 
were certainly the same as for the match between Iran and Germany - but 
what an enormous difference there was between the unforgettable soccer 
evening in the first case and the pitiful prodding around in the second! The 
rules don ' t make the game. The performance does, it creates the miserable 
or great event. Just as in the performing arts. 
28 And this is all the m o r e remarkable the more memorable the event is. To a certain 
extent, however, it is to be f o u n d in every event. 
29 N o t e also t ha t in the late s ix t een th h u n d r e d ' s po r t ' cou ld signify ' thea t r ica l 
p e r f o r m a n c e ' , 'show', 'play' {The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical 
Principles, ed. Lesley Brown, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, vol. 2, 2999). 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
3. Sport's semantics: drama without script 
But another objection still awaits an answer. What is the sporting event 
about? Does it carry with it any relevant meaning? 
It was often said that while art expresses ideas, feelings, states of mind 
and therefore has a meaning, sport expresses nothing and therefore has no 
.meaning'.30 Sport may, in its event character, be similar to theater, but while 
a play is about human conflicts or the drama of the condition humaine, sport 
is about nothing but running or throwing or sophisticated movements like 
the Gienger salto. 
This assessment, however, is profoundly mistaken. It is based on a 
confusion about meaning and aboutness, assuming that only what is explicitly 
about something can be meaningful. The script of theater is about something, 
hence theater is meaningful, while sport lacks a script, hence it is meaningless 
- this is the line of reasoning here. Yet this misses the point insofar as artistic 
meaning is not necessarily and exclusively constituted by aboutness, but - even 
in its essence - by the artistic event itself. And this applies equally to sport. 
Considering the potential meaningfulness of sport one does not have to look 
for a script - there is indeed none - but for the typicality of the event. 
Sport can display all the dramatic traits of human existence. In this lies 
its symbolic dimension. Think of a 10 000 meter race. You can witness the 
tactical battle between the opponents, the leading group's break away, the 
leader's coming unstuck or the tragedy of a Sonya O'Sullivan, the risk of taking 
the outer lane on the last curve, the dramatic closing spurt and the luck of a 
runner who is suddenly able to break through on the inner lane as it becomes 
free and wins. Or think of the unforgettable moment when, for the first time, 
in a 400m race a runner tried to win Olympic Gold by thrusting himself over 
the finish line. 
The crucial point is that all this is created uniquely by the performance and 
the event itself-it does not follow from the implementation of a script. When 
30 This view, advocated for instance by David Best (»The Aesthetic in Sport«), is criticized 
by Christopher Cordner (»Differences Between Sport and Art«). Best claims that while 
»any art form, properly so-called, must at least allow for the possibility of the expression 
of a concep t ion of life issues, such as c o n t e m p o r a r y mora l , social a n d pol i t ical 
problems«, the sporting performer does not »have the possibility of expressing through 
his particular medium his view of life situations« (386). To this Cordne r objects that 
while »the representational arts seem to do so [...] the situation is d i f ferent with the 
nonrepresentat ional arts«. Hence it would be be t te r to say that »works of art manifest 
or enact or realize life-values« and are in themselves »most deeply meaningful or value-
laden« (429). In view of this, however, »sports quite clearly can have meaning in a very 
similar way« (430). 
228 
Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
we witness something dramatic, this - in the case of sport — is due to nothing 
but the event itself. The actual occurrence cannot be anticipated, the athletes' 
performance is creative in the highest sense. There was no script. Sport is drama 
without a script. It creates its own drama.31 
In this respect sport appears more artistic still than many of the arts -
more so, for example, than all the performing arts as these are based on a 
script, choreography or a composition. In sport, however, the drama is due 
to the event alone. The freedom and event character of sport's production of 
meaning is eminently artistic. 
Sporting events act out most basic features of the human condition, and 
the way they do this is marvellously self-creative. In so doing sport is sport 
semantically intense and intrinsically artistic. In this respect I see every reason 
to view sport as art.32 
4. Identification: the spectators' fascination with sport 
My analysis focuses on the event and the spectacle of sport. The spectators, 
in my view, are an integral part of the event. But why do we admire athletic 
performances at all? Shouldn't we be envious instead - because we, the non-
athletes, will never achieve this kind of perfection? How can the contemporary 
fascination with sport be explained?33 
One essential point is that we take the athletes' performance to be not 
totally beyond our scope. We even take it to be ours in a way. There is a feeling 
31 This might , however, provoke another objection against sport 's potential status as 
art. O n e might say that art requires repeatability, hence sport can, because of the 
uniqueness of the sport ing event, not be art. But again modern art does away with the 
a rgument . For it no longer subscribes to a general repeatability thesis. Happenings 
were and per formances of ten are single events. Afterwards one can witness them only 
th rough photos or videotapes - just as in the case of sporting events too. 
32 It appears notable that Hegel linked the origin of Greek art with Greek sport: »The 
Greeks first made beautiful forms of themselves before they expressed such objectively 
in marble and in paintings. T h e harmless competit ion in games, in which each shows 
what he is, is very old« (Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber diePhilosophie der Geschichte, 297). Hegel 
is of the op in ion that Greek sport preceded and prepared Greek art. 
33 That there is such fascination is obvious: today more than sixty percent of the population 
in western countr ies watch sport on a regular basis; the last soccer World Cup was 
a t tended by almost three million and watched on TV by thirty-seven billion the world 
over. - 1 have at tempted an explanation in more detail in the paper »Just what is it that 
makes today 's spor t so appeal ing?« (Stanford University, Athlet ic D e p a r t m e n t , 
Colloquium »If You Want to Build Character Try Something Else: Ethics and Sports in 
1997 and Beyond«, 16 May 1997). 
229 
Wolfgang Welsch 
of »mea res agitur« - like in theater where when we see kings or people of 
excellence we don't think they are of an ontologically different kind, but rather 
take them to be fellow human beings whose destiny confronts us with human 
potentials that are in principle relevant to our being and lives too. Athletes 
are perceived as human beings - even if we consider them to be somehow 
superhuman. It would be quite different if we were to see beings f rom a 
different planet. Sport is not science fiction. It's real and human. Something 
connected with human character is going on. 
The athletes demonstrate a potential of the human body as such which is 
certainly factually unattainable for most of us, but is not in principle beyond, 
so to speak, the idea of our body. The athletes realize an outs tanding 
potentiality of our kind of body. They are performing for us and instead of 
us. As they are actors of the human being, we can and do identify with them. 
Nothing is simply beyond us - neither the bodies nor the activities nor 
the emotions -, everything is familiar to a certain extent. It's a fellow human 
being who is performing, suffering and winning or losing out there.34 This 
makes the sporting event a shared event and the drama one which we too 
experience. From this it follows that the structure of sport comprises both 
athletes and spectators.35 We are fascinated by the realization of an ideal 
34 It's not only the athlete's body which is within ou r comprehens ion as physical beings, 
but the activities he performs are also largely familiar to us. This is obviously the case 
with cycling, soccer, basketball, swimming, skating, car racing and the like - most of us 
have at least at some time in their life tried the respective activity or one similar to it, 
no matter how modest the level. And indirectly it is the case even if we haven ' t m u c h 
experience with these kinds of sport, or n o n e at all as perhaps with fenc ing or pole 
vault or the javelin. We are at least to some extent familiar with the motor ic pa t te rns 
relevant to these activities f rom our daily bodily experience, and if we aren ' t , as in the 
case of pole vault, we can still - by a sort of bodily empathy - imagine and even feel 
what's going on there. We always have at least some initial access to the pattern of activity, 
and this is enough to get in touch with it, whereas, on the o ther hand , it reinforces the 
distance between our own capacities and the outs tanding event we are watching and 
are fascinated by. - The same holds for the emotional processes we witness and which 
are of ten so dramatic. We unders tand what concent ra t ion be fo re the start is, or what 
it means during a long distance race to hold a good position waiting one ' s chance, 
and finally, when the second-placed r u n n e r attacks and takes the lead towards the 
end of the last curve, our hear t starts beat ing with his. Or du r ing a tennis match we 
not only admire the wonderful shots bu t also have some percept ion of the players' 
mental ups and downs and might be able to predict just by watching the body language 
of a player before and during his serve whether or no t it will be good. 
35 Cf. Cordner ' s remark: »[...] it is arguable that our concept of sport , pe rhaps unlike 
that of our ancestors, is in part a concept of that which is to be seen and evaluated 
f rom a spectator 's point of view« (Cordner , »Differences Between Spor t and Art«, 
426). 
230 
Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
potentiality of the human being, one factually unavailable to us but actualized 
in the spor t ing event; in this sense we experience the event as being 
representative for us and enjoy and participate in the drama displayed. 
5. Celebration of contingency 
Contingency is another main point in sport's dramatic character and 
appreciation. Sport is not only the celebration of physical perfection, but also 
of contingency. This element may be difficult to describe - partly because 
contingency has never received adequate attention in our culture, which has 
tried instead to ignore or overcome contingency, so that adequate concepts 
are lacking - yet contingency is one of the most evident and appreciated aspects 
in sporting events. 
A competition can take the course one expected. The superior athlete 
wins, perhaps even achieves a new world record, and this too may have been 
expected and supported - in long-distance runs for example by hiring 
»pacemakers«. So the time attained was great - but not the event, because 
nothing unpredictable happened. Itjust confirmed expectations, did not create 
a dynamics of its own, no contingency came in. Despite being a record-
breaking run, as an event it was pretty dull. 
How different if something unpredictable happens — if there is a real fight, 
if the result is uncertain during a race, if, finally, a new star is born; or when, 
in a Formula One race, the outcome is permanently incalculable - a slight 
lapse in attention, or a competitor's crazy driving when being overtaken, or 
sudden rain showers can change everything. In such cases the event creates 
its own course, and contingency is permanently in play. And we appreciate 
such a pure event, with the permanent emergence of possibilities and its self-
organizational character more than a predictable result. 
Or take soccer as example. Certainly, the skill and perfection of 
outstanding players' actions is part of its fascination. But we also expect the 
whole game to be exciting and - if we're lucky - can be fascinated by the way 
the players react at every moment to the course and experience the game has 
provided so far. Things are most fascinating when it's permanently touch and 
go, with both the game as a whole and almost every single action. Whether a 
50-meter dream pass is in fact this, or a failure, can depend on 10 centimeters 
or a player's outstanding reaction. What can bring one team the decisive goal 
might also open up an excellent counter chance for its opponents. And when 
the pass is made, you have no precise idea what it will result in. Success and 
failure here lie unbelievably close to one another. Soccer, to me, seems to be 
231 
Wolfgang Welsch 
so fascinating because it is subject in the most intense way to contingency. It is 
a celebration of contingency. (And it's probably for this reason that many 
scholars and intellectuals like it - it demonstrates to them the insuperability 
of what in their professional work they try to outdo: contingency.) 
But doesn ' t precisely this p rominence of contingency h inder the 
declaration that sport be art? Isn't art a paradigmatic attempt to overcome 
contingency, with one of the first criteria of an accomplished artwork being 
that you cannot change an iota without destroying its per fec t ion and 
extraordinary effect? Well, traditionally this opinion was held. Modern art, 
however, is (in some schools at least) characterized by a turn to contingency. 
Think of Marcel Duchamp who introduced contingency in many ways into art 
and, when his »Great Glass« (which he had declared »definitively unfinished«) 
was broken during transportation, called this »the happy completion of the 
piece« and made the cracks prominent elements of its final rearrangement.36 
Or think of John Cage, with whom the emancipation of musical contingency 
took place - with respect to sounds as well as to notation. The welcoming of 
contingency is part of modern art's aforement ioned struggle against its 
traditional constitution. - Therefore the celebration of contingency which takes 
place in sport can certainly not be an argument against sport's potentially having 
an artistic status. 
6. Intermediate summary 
To wrap things up: I have gone through several constituents of the 
modern concept of art and discussed various traits of contemporary sport. 
Some of the new conceptual elements of art (the prominence of the aesthetic, 
art's striving for connections with the everyday world, the fraying of art forms, 
and the revaluation of popular art) proved favorable from the start for viewing 
sport as art; and the elements which at first glance denied such admission 
36 I am referr ing to the original piece, today located in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 
There are, in the meantime, some break-free reproductions around in various museums. 
In my view they reflect the art world's resistance to the step made by Duchamp . O n e 
still prefers the illusion of necessity over the acceptance of contingency. Consider also 
that the break lines of the original piece no t only c o r r e s p o n d to the mechan ica l 
features of the work (marvellously so f r o m the left to the middle in the lower par t ) , 
bu t add a new semant ic layer to the work; it now displays the b reakdown of the 
mechanical attitude (and this as a consequence of a mechanical event itself) ra ther 
than the sophisticated usage of this attitude; we now witness the vulnerability and the 
overcoming of this ideal (which, decades later, took place in the cul tural area in 
general). 
232 
Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
(symbolic status and self-purposiveness, meaningfulness, striving for necessity 
instead of contingency), turned out on closer inspection to be either quite 
fulfillable by sport, or elements of a concept of art that has been surpassed by 
the development of art itself. 
Perhaps sport does lack some traits constitutive to some kinds of art -
but so do other kinds of art too. Painting and sculpture produce object-like 
works, the performing arts don't. Their type of work is different. And so is 
sport's. And if there are some traits of arts which sport lacks altogether this 
too does not necessarily mean that sport cannot be art. For the concept of art 
is a complex and open one. Nothing must, in order to be art, fulfill all the 
aspects which can be responsible for calling something art. A series of traits -
differing partly from one genre to the next - is sufficient.37 And sport meets a 
variety of those traits - and obviously important ones at that.38 Therefore it 
seems highly plausible to me to view today's sport as art. 
7. Contemporary sport: a postmodern art for everyone 
Finally, sport has a big advantage over what is usually considered art: it 
is understandable and enjoyable for practically everyone. To be fascinated 
with sport you don' t need a diploma-whereas for the enjoyment of modern, 
difficult art you apparently do. Of course, even in the case of sport some 
knowlege is required: you need to know, or to find out, the rules, and the 
more you are acquainted with a type of sport the more you will be able to 
37 With this, I am of course relying on Wittgenstein's concept of »family resemblances« 
which in my view constitutes one of the biggest breakthroughs in conceptual matters. 
38 Additionally, the quest ion of kitsch might serve as a test case. In the realm of the arts 
kitsch is typically possible. So are there instances of kitsch in sport? My h u n c h is that 
above all the sports which directly strive to be aesthetic are in danger of producing 
events which for an educated sensibility come close to kitsch. Take ribbon gymnastics 
as an example. T h e playfulness, which stems not from bodily exertion but from interplay 
with a fancy toy, borders - to say the least - on kitsch. Or imagine a skier who only 
tr ied to ski beautiful ly and not efficiently: some might admire him, others would 
certainly recognize and despise this as kitsch. What was so marvellous with Ingemar 
Stenmark was that in his case aesthetic appeal and efficiency resulted f rom the same 
movements; f u r t h e r developments , in slalom for example, however h indered such 
congruence : once you were allowed to ski over, instead of a round , the slalom posts 
(as has been the case since the introduction of flexible poles), your descent can still 
be impressive in its efficiency but no longer for its beauty. - If my guess is somehow 
correct , then - interestingly enough and seemingly paradoxically - the apparently 
'aesthetic ' sports would largely be exposed to the kitsch trap, whereas the "purposive' 
ones would be good candidates for 'art ' . 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
enjoy the competition.39 Modern art, however, is - despite the protestations 
of our art pedagogians - hardly accessible to everyone. 
Whereas sport - for obvious reasons - is popular, art is - for equally 
good reasons — elitist. Many artists are aware of this and suffer from not having 
the support of the crowd, they share Paul Klee's complaint »no people carries 
us«.40 From the other side, Arnold Gehlen gave the corresponding diagnosis: 
»We have all learnt to live alongside today's art.«41 - But most of us have learnt 
to live with sport and to enjoy it. 
Contemporary sport - in contrast to modern art - matches the sensus 
communis. It is art for everyone. It probably is the popular art of today. It is 
certainly the most social art form. The huge increase of public interest in sport 
is an indication of this.42 Where art, by becoming difficult and a matter for 
experts, has turned away from common taste, sport fills the gap. It offers the 
extraordinary and yet understandable event. And with sport things are so 
obvious. In the case of sport you don' t have to ask yourself critically whether 
what you enjoy is indeed art and whether your pleasure is legitimate or just 
mistaken because in fact you are a philistine who usually mistakes kitsch for 
art. 
8. Sport as a neglected topic of aesthetics 
My interest here is not to promote sport. Rather I would like to point 
out its artlike traits in order to show what a valuable topic it could be for 
aesthetics. Sport is usually neglected by the discipline; one just sees sport's 
aesthetic traits and judges these to be simply obvious and not an interesting 
m And, of course, there are degrees of competence in viewing sport; no t every spectator 
is a good spectator. 
40 Paul Klee, Das bildnerischeDenken, ed. Jo rg Spiller (Basel: Schwabe, 3rd edit ion 1971), 
95. 
41 Arnold Gehlen, Zeit-Bilder (Frankfur t /Main: A thenaum, 2nd edit ion 1965), 221. 
42 Already in 1928 J o h n Dewey noted »that the spread of sports and games is one of the 
characteristic features of existing social life« (John Dewey, »What Are the Russian 
Schools Doing?«, in: J o h n Dewey, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 3: 1927-1928, 
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press 1984, 224-232, he re 
225). In 1931 he commented with respect to newspapers: »Politics may appear on the 
first page and on the editorial page of newspapers, bu t the sport pages occupy more 
space, and the average reader turns to these pages with an eagerness which contrasts 
with the languid way in which he reads the political news and skips the editorials« (John 
Dewey, »Is There Hope for Politics?«, in: J o h n Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 
6: 1931-1932, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press 1985, 
182-189, here 182). 
234 
Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art ? 
matter. The pleasure in sport is considered to be lowbrow or mass pleasure 
— one not worthy of positive consideration by aesthetics. But by neglecting the 
ardike character of sport we also fail to understand why it is so fascinating for 
a large public. In fact, the very fascination with sport derives from aspects which, 
in a different form, we are used to experiencing and admiring in the arts. 
Recognition of this is what I would like to promote. In sport elementary aspects 
of the human condition are at stake and are acted out - in a very direct and 
at the same time symbolically intense manner. 
9. Art-art versus sport-art 
With all this I am of course not saying that sport replaces art, or that it 
could or should do so. I am arguing only that it fulfills functions of art for a 
broader audience no longer reached by art. 
And I'd like to suggest complementarity. Art, in my view, should remain 
difficult, elitist, and experimental. In other words: it should not succumb to 
popular taste. I don' t see its future prosperity in competing with the abundant 
satisfactions which the demands of an entertainment and amusement society 
expe r i ence t h rough cu r r en t design, everyday aestheticization - and 
pos tmodern sport. Where art chooses to take this direction, it is at a 
disadvantage anyway and, more importantly, falls short of its genuine task. 
Unyielding art on the one side and arts of entertainment on the other side 
could be useful and appreciable in a complementary way. A distribution and 
differentiation of this kind would, in my view, constitute not the worst outcome 
of the modern transformation of the artistic. 
Or, to be more outspoken on this point: after all the efforts of modern 
art to escape its golden cage of autonomy, to turn to life and to acknowledge 
and make us appreciate the aesthetic outside of art - a tendency which obviously 
furthers aestheticization of the everyday and which provides strong arguments 
for my assessment of sport as art - it might be time to reinforce the distinction 
between art in the proper sense and aestheticization of the everyday.43 Avant 
garde art, revolting against art's autonomy and aesthetically sacramenting the 
everyday, has done its job. Its victory is obvious and has no need of any further 
proof. Art could return to its different task once again — one closer to its older 
43 Cf. my criticism - on aesthetic grounds - of many phenomena of aestheticization in 
»Aesthet icizat ion Processes: P h e n o m e n a , Dist inctions a n d Prospects« (Undoing 
Aesthetics, 1-32). My formula for those failures is: hyper-aestheticization breaks into 
anaesthet ic izat ion (cf. also my »Ästhetik und Anästhetik«, in: Ästhetisches Denken, 
Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990, 5th ed. 1998, 9-40). 
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Wolfgang Welsch 
aims, with the opposition to current aestheticization now being one of its 
constituents.44 Sport best fills in for the everyday longings of art. But it cannot 
substitute for Schonberg, Pollock or Godard. Art's exception is to occur in a 
different way from sport's.45 
10. Conclusion 
Ultimately my intention was not to decide the question as to whether sport 
is art or not . This would, in my view, be phras ing the ques t ion too 
essentialistically. What I tried instead was to offer some reasons why - in today's 
conditions of art as well as of sport - many people find it highly plausible to 
call sport an art. 
My hunch is that all objections against this are out of step with the modern 
understanding of art as brought forward by art itself. When, towards the end, 
I suggested complementarity between art and sport, I did not mean to question 
sport's status as art. Sport is one kind of art. Art (in the usual sense) is another 
one. That is all. 
44 Cf., as a case study on this, my »Contemporary Art in Public Space: AFeast for the Eyes 
or an Annoyance?«, in: Undoing Aesthetics, 118-122. 
45 Likewise Adorno 's remark that »art that runs away f r o m illusion, seeking re fuge in 
play, actually ends up in a class with sports« (T. W. Adorno , Aesthetic theory, trans. C. 
Lenhardt , New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, 148) did not mean to ignore 
m o d e r n ar t ' s con t r ibu t ions to an aes the t i c r eva lua t ion of the everyday, b u t to 
emphasize that, notwithstanding all this, the p rope r task of art should not be lost. 
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