Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. You’re a frigging protozoan sitting there. You’re fixing to drown.* In the catacombs of early Christian art, the Jonah story lingers, pointing to an extensive oral history of dramatic tellings and retellings. You start reaching pain […]
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Richard “Pancho” Gonzalez(s)
Pancho Gonzalez(s) Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. after Carlos Fuentes’ La Muerte de Artemio Cruz My father’s bare feet, the borderlands. I could beat anyone at marbles. Practice, practice, practice, yet those other kids’ voices never stopped: “spic,” “spic,” “spic,” “wetback.” […]
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Jimmy Connors
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. Note: Like a monk copying manuscripts in the dark ages, I have faithfully copied the following sentences from a source with the strangest of titles: Jimmy Connors Saved My Life, by Joel Drucker.* As I rearranged […]
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Shingo Kunieda, “Kami”
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. Questions: How Japanese is this striking poster from the Scottish designer, Nial Smith? How Japanese is this writing? Let’s talk Zen. Let’s talk tennis. Shingo as Samurai warrior elite Zen mind/no-mind so quiet it becomes one […]
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Boris Becker, Germany
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. A thought experiment: let’s push nationalism too far. The television stations in Germany would shift other sporting events to different times so the entire nation could watch Becker’s matches. A Becker match meant drama: Sturm und […]
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Novak Djokovic
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Early in his career, the most irritating ball bounce in the history of tennis. Changed that. Early in his […]
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Maria Sharapova
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. Sharapova painted as a relentless puppet machine in a femme fatale nightmare. “Surreal but Real” is how Tom Lohner describes his art. Sharapova painted the moment before she cracks a serve, the background paint dripping upward […]
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Guga’s Hair, 1997
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. Novak Djokovic’s unruly wig bouncing Djoker caricaturing Gustavo Kuerten so that he looks like a bobblehead sports doll, Guga’s hair in reality so loose and free his body so loose-limbed and free dancing and bobbing to […]
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Monica Seles
Click here for book description or to purchase Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. Randomly choose a number from 1-4. I Better if the violence happens offstage as in Greek drama. Just give me the plot, the facts. The nine-inch boning knife, the deranged fan of Steffi Graf coming out […]
Click here to purchase new book Tennis Players as Works of Art with artwork from 45 artists. 4,500 rpm on the forehand. Borg’s topspin revolution doubled, squared. All that topspin means net clearance, safety, angles. The perfect weapon for clay, its wars of attrition. Not far from the arena of Roland Garros lay the caves […]