A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

5 July 2008

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

Nowadays she says she is just as happy hitting paint-coloured balls on to canvases, in a technique she calls ‘tennising’, as playing tennis itself. Some of the balls are carefully aimed, some are bounced up and down on the spot, pre-serve style, to make an intense pattern. Some are whacked randomly to create ‘more esoteric pieces’.

The idea was proposed to her eight years ago by the artist Juraj Králik, a fellow Czech. ‘I was very sceptical but curious. I wanted to try new things. I thought, “I’ll try it a few times and be done with it,” but eight years later we are still making pieces and the stuff just grew.’ This week the pair unveil their first commercial exhibition in London.

Ms Navratilova says that making the paintings is her expression of what it feels like to play tennis. ‘It’s that moment of suspense, when you hit the ball and it lands and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. You let it go and trust that it’s going to turn out all right and so it is here.

‘It’s my expression of what tennis is to me, the beauty of it. People have always had their interpretation of what I am on the tennis court, this is my interpretation. The result is dynamic because it took energy to create it.’

There is talk of one day getting other players to take part, including Chris Evert, with whom she is still friends. Her former rival is marrying the golfer Greg Norman in the Bahamas as we speak but Ms Navratilova could not attend the wedding because she is commentating at Wimbledon.

She laughs. ‘I’ve been to her first two weddings so I told her, “This better be the last one.” But I think they’ve each found their match, their equal, and I wish them well.’

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Fergus Pickering

July 5th, 2008 5:10am Report this comment

Everybody loves Martina and so do I. I suppose it would have been ungallant in a man to say the pictures are rubbish. But then you aren't a man. No I haven't seen them (the pictures). Jackson Pollock's rubbish too, don't you think? Pont Martina in the direction of Jenny Saville. That's proper art.

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