The Art of Fighting
Thousands of books have been written on what art is or should be, the problem is that art is entirely subjective. In other words, art is in the eyes of the beholder. Nobel Prize winning author Andre Gide gave his view on art in Poetique, stating that “Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labour.” Here, Gide means to say that sacrifice is a necessary condition of any artistic pursuit.
If you subscribe to this interpretation of art, then fighting is the purest form of art. Fighting is an artistic pursuit in which the stakes are very high for the competitors because they will probably both end up bloodied and broken in the process. This is because there is nothing more brutal, sublime, and honest than a fight. The high stakes of a fight remind us of that "truth" that is always talked about in relation to art; namely, that without pain and sacrifice there is no art. The willingness to embrace such risks is clearly indicative of a fire inside which any artist would wish to be able to express in their work.
If self expression is your criteria for art, mixed martial arts is rife with it. Where a painter has a few feet of canvas to cover, a mixed martial artist has seven hundred and fifty square feet. How a fighter moves in that canvas dictates the course of the fight. In addition, the permissive ruleset allows such freedom that the only limiting factor is the resisting opponent. The resisting opponent is what makes fighting so difficult and compelling to watch. Consequently, to be successful at fighting requires grit, determination, and some luck.
This writer's favorite definition of art comes from the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy wrote the following in an essay entitled What is Art?: “It is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.” In times of depression it is sports that benefit. Fighting, in particular, saw great advances during the bleakest times in American history. People love coming together for a good fight for exactly the same reason that people go and see a movie; that is, to strengthen social bonds through a communal experience.
If you subscribe to this interpretation of art, then fighting is the purest form of art. Fighting is an artistic pursuit in which the stakes are very high for the competitors because they will probably both end up bloodied and broken in the process. This is because there is nothing more brutal, sublime, and honest than a fight. The high stakes of a fight remind us of that "truth" that is always talked about in relation to art; namely, that without pain and sacrifice there is no art. The willingness to embrace such risks is clearly indicative of a fire inside which any artist would wish to be able to express in their work.
If self expression is your criteria for art, mixed martial arts is rife with it. Where a painter has a few feet of canvas to cover, a mixed martial artist has seven hundred and fifty square feet. How a fighter moves in that canvas dictates the course of the fight. In addition, the permissive ruleset allows such freedom that the only limiting factor is the resisting opponent. The resisting opponent is what makes fighting so difficult and compelling to watch. Consequently, to be successful at fighting requires grit, determination, and some luck.
This writer's favorite definition of art comes from the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy wrote the following in an essay entitled What is Art?: “It is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.” In times of depression it is sports that benefit. Fighting, in particular, saw great advances during the bleakest times in American history. People love coming together for a good fight for exactly the same reason that people go and see a movie; that is, to strengthen social bonds through a communal experience.
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