In the mid-1970s, when Jack Nicklaus and Andy Warhol were both still on top of their games, the golfing great posed for the pop master as part of a silkscreen series depicting famous athletes. Nicklaus, however, got a mite teed off when the artist asked him to move his "stick."
"Excuse me, this is not a stick; this is a club," the Golden Bear growled at Warhol, who was clearly more interested in Nicklaus' celebrity than the otherworldly talent with which he had achieved it.
The seeming sense of differentness between golf and art is further illustrated in a quote from another links legend, Arnold Palmer, that is blown up on a fairway-green gallery wall of a High Museum of Art exhibition opening Sunday: "What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive."
But with the exhibit "The Art of Golf," the first major art survey on the subject organized by an American art institution, the High hopes to show that the poetry of golf in fact can be captured in a museum, that sport and art can be one.
The show includes more than 90 paintings, drawings, photographs and sculpture spanning four centuries by artists ranging from Rembrandt to James McNeil Whistler and Charles Lees to Charles Schulz.
The exhibit's focal point is Scotsman Lees’ iconic 1847 painting “The Golfers,” a 7-foot-wide image of a foursome putting at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews, surrounded by some 50 well-dressed onlookers, each a portrait of distinct personality. On loan from exhibit co-organizer National Galleries of Scotland, it is being shown in the U.S. for the first time.
“The Art of Golf” continues the High’s multi-year partnership with the National Galleries, a consortium of three Edinburgh museums, that launched with 2010's "Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting." Brainstorming a followup with High Museum director Michael Shapiro, Scottish museum officials John Leighton and Michael Clarke talked up the Lees masterwork, widely considered the greatest painting of golf, and how it speaks to the heart of the sport and the soul of Scotland.
Given that Georgia is the home of the green jacket (the Augusta Masters' hallowed prize) and that Atlanta is the birthplace of one of the sport's immortals, Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones Jr. (1902-1971), it seemed a fine fit.
Unshy about his desire to lure first-time visitors to the High, Shapiro saw potential.
"We have a very wide menu, which we like," he said at an exhibit preview this week. "I think this is another way for us to broaden the path, for more people to interact with art."
The High has scored before by booking the unexpected. Its 2010 exhibit on custom-designed luxury cars, "The Allure of the Automobile," drew 146,841, many of whom had never visited the museum. With 45,000 households holding annual memberships (putting the High the top 10 among American museums) and total attendance of 428,000 (excluding lectures and films), leaders continually drive to broaden its base.
So while the National Galleries of Scotland had Lees' painting and other old sod links depictions, and the High could tap a mother lode of Jones portraits and related pieces around Atlanta, it was left to curator Julia Forbes and consulting curator Catherine Lewis to determine what should surround those central elements. Doing so required them to play rounds of history detective, since, unlike most major art shows, there were no exhibit catalogs or other substantial research trails to follow.
"It was really exciting because no one had really done this work before, taking the subject matter of golf and thinking about how it had inspired artists," Forbes said. "So in the end, to realize that we actually have had 400 years worth of artistic expression around this game is really remarkable."
There were many unexpected discoveries along the way, including that George Bellows, the American painter best known for New York cityscapes, had captured golf scenes, and that the American impressionist Childe Hassam not only enjoyed playing the game in playgrounds for the rich like East Hampton, N.Y., but depicting it.
Beyond the Edinburgh institutions, major loans were secured from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the United States Golf Association Museum in New Jersey (which held a series of 16 1935 Harold Edgerton stroboscopic photos deconstructing Jones' swing that had once been owned by the golfer) and private collections including that of Atlanta technology titan John Imlay.
The curators rounded up five portraits of Jones, about which Forbes said, "Today, my favorite is the Wayman Adams full-length [80 inches tall] portrait that’s owned by the Atlanta Athletic Club. I love the painterly quality of it, the grandness of it. But he also looks young, ... [with] this youthful expression of the hope of what’s going to happen. I think it’s just terrific."
The painting was commissioned in 1926 by a group of prominent Atlanta businessmen after Jones won the U.S. Open and the British Open. Haverty's Furniture founder J.J. Haverty wrote the artist a letter with clear instructions: "[It] should be composed with the thought in mind that you are not making the portrait of sport, but of a young man with a high order of mental capacity, of wonderful concentration, self-control, culture, determination, and ambition."
Artists have made golf a subject for many reasons over the years, Forbes noted, from the allure of landscape to a magnetic pull toward heroism, such as outlined by Haverty. As a long-time golfer, she can appreciate both.
When she interviewed Nicklaus, one of her heroes, for the exhibit's introductory video at his offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., the Golden Bear was a teddy bear, except for an aversion to second takes. Forbes hopes that Nicklaus, who has family in Atlanta, will visit "The Art of Golf."
"I'd be very happy to give him a tour," the curator said with artful understatement.
Exhibit preview
"The Art of Golf"
Through June 24. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; until 8 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. $18; $15 students, seniors; $11 ages 6-17; free 5 and younger. 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4200, www.high.org.
Also opening Sunday:"Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collection of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts," 60 works by the seminal Alabama folk artist.
5 ways High plans to link up with golfers
1. Buying ads in atypical places, such as 790/The Zone, www.PGA.com and Fore Georgia magazine.
2. Cross-promoting via e-mail and social media with organizations such as the Georgia State Golf Association.
3. Creating special promotions, programming with PGA Tour Superstore.
4. Holding special “Golf Club Nights" on March 1 and April 5 to encourage area club members to see the show.
5. Presenting golf-related programming during spring break.
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