Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Just beginning to read an article (Platchias, 2003) from the European Journal of Sport Science entitled Sport is Art. Platchias attempts to identify the common features of art and sport - difficult because both are open concepts. In fact in some ways, art can be said to be delineated by the cultural classes who confer the label of art on certain forms of production and consumption. Think, for example of your local opera house, if you have one, and now consider its status relative to the latest Muse concert. The distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic is important; natural landscapes, for example, or people, can be aesthetically pleasing without being considered to be works of art. And one of the distinctions between art and sport is that art is considered to be without purpose or end product; it is an act in its own right, partly unconscious of its own artistry. While the end product of sport is more purposive. Sport is unarguably aesthetic, but is it ...