JP loves football and has been teaching me about the sport as I teach him about art. So I was delighted to go hear Matthew Barney talk about SECONDARY, a work that brings the two together.

The work returns to a 1978 football game between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots, and the collision between Jack Tatum and Darryl Stingley that left Stingley paralyzed. Barney uses that moment and the choreography, language, equipment, and rituals of football to think about bodies, violence, memory, and impact. In the film, David Thomson performs Stingley and Raphael Xavier performs Tatum; Shamar Watt performs Lester Hayes.

As Matthew spoke, I was texting JP: Lester Hayes. Darryl Stingley. The 94 slant. The star pattern marking the location of the hit. I was suddenly learning football through an artist I have thought about for decades.

Matthew was also the exception that proved the rule in my master’s thesis. I was looking at artists using their own nude bodies in video and thinking about gender through beauty, humor, and action. The women tended to present themselves seriously and beautifully and did things to themselves. The men tended not to present themselves as traditionally attractive, used humor, and did things away from themselves.

Except Matthew Barney.

Years later, I was sitting in an auditorium learning about football through him, while having an ongoing conversation with JP about what I was seeing and hearing.

I love when two people’s interests begin to overlap like this. JP is teaching me how to see a football game differently, and I am sharing with him how an artist can take the language and history of that game and turn it into something else. Art gives us another way into each other’s worlds.