Rackets, not rockets (Make sport, not war) (2024) Schilderij door Volodymyr Korolievskyi

At first glance, you might think that this painting is devoid of any particular meaning and simply depicts two young cute tennis players in a semi-abstract manner. But after reading its title, you realize that you are deeply mistaken. Read the title carefully and try to understand the essence. Replacing one letter in a word can completely change its meaning. In the same way, a small action in the process of communication between two people can turn them from friends into enemies and vice versa. On the court, tennis players compete with each other in a duel, just as people compete in the struggle for achieving personal interests, or countries wage war. This rivalry exists only in the context of a sports competition, when each of the opponents is dressed in a sports uniform and is under the close attention of fans, some of whom are rooting for one athlete, and some for the other. Outside the stadium, tennis players become ordinary people, perhaps even friends. The tension that makes them oppose each other, fight for supremacy in any sport, ceases to exist between them. The same is true in the life of humanity. The sports arena is an allusion of existence, the struggle of paradigms and ideologies, mutually exclusive claims to their dominance. Everyone can think up this metaphor on their own. Now pay attention to the second part of the title, taken in brackets. This is a slightly modified slogan of the hippies of the 1960s. The athletes are not depicted during a sports tournament, they are facing the viewer full-face, as if addressing him with a silent appeal. Their facial expressions are decisive and bold, even ultimatum-like. Their lips are closed, but we can guess what message they want to convey to us. No matter how intense a sports match may be, one must remember that its goal is peaceful, and its participants do not hate or curse each other. It is only a performance for the amusement of the public, but not a gladiator fight. So let sport become the only place for peaceful confrontation between people. Let the accumulated tension spill out of us in the stadium, and not on the battlefields! Stop launching awar rockets at each other, better pick up your rackets and play tennis! The Summer Olympics are currently taking place in Paris. In addition to the war in Ukraine, they also became one of the reasons for creating this picture. But its meaning is much broader and more comprehensive than specific historical events. It is about the eternal gestalts of humanity, which it has never overcome on the path of its development.

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