Montreal artist makes soccer the subject of his brush

You can take the boy out of soccer but, if he’s been inoculated by “The Beautiful Game,” you’re going to have a hard time taking it out of the boy. Case in point – Eugene Abrams, a Montreal-born artist who picked up soccer at about the same time most Canadian kids don their first pair of skates.

At some point between his birth and the first day of school, Abrams’ father, a United Nations employee, moved to New York.

“When I was a kid I went to the UN school from Grade 1 to 6 and my friends were from all around the world. Soccer was the thing.” Abrams recalled. “I don’t know what was happening in other school yards in New York City but in ours soccer was it. I started playing on teams in school and played until I was about 14.”

Among his early memories of the game are playing left back on his school team and getting to observe the son of a legend.

“Pele’s son actually went to my school, the United Nations School in New York. He was about six years old and I was about 11. I was only at the Manhattan branch of the school for one year but I remember he used to have the limo driver kick the ball against the cement wall while they were waiting for classes to start.”

Shuttling back and forth between Montreal and the U.S.., Abrams continued to play the game when he could, recalling some pick-up games he took part in when the rest of the city were in warm arenas.

“I kept playing here and there, pickup games above McGill. I wasn’t a student there but I played on the field there,” he said. “It was the last two or three years of the Soviet era and there were all these guys from the consulate who would come and play bare-chested in winter.”

Abrams completed his studies in the U.S., earning an MA in figurative art and embarking on his career.

“When I came back, among other things, I started teaching fine art and producing several series of works, touching on different issues, all having to do with culture but not sports. The beauty of soccer as an international sport was clear to me but I didn’t think about it a lot.”

He carries the tools of his trade with him when he leaves the house and they were at hand when his son, now 11, began playing a few years ago.

“I started sketching the kids. The fluidity of movement was still in my body from years of playing and thinking about it all the time and it was coming out my pen,” he recalled.

Soccer became a focus of Abrams’ work as he produced a series of works that combined the game with other elements and influences, most notably the classic Italian theatre form, commedia dell’arte, characterized by stock characters playing narrowly defined roles in an ensemble performance.

“I gradually began integrating masks and characters from commedia dell’arte, like Punchinello and the long hat. I didn’t know where it came from but it was sort of putting together various aspects of my background. I had been interested in theatre as well when I was in university.”

The images, somewhere between impressionistic and spectral, place the actors as soccer players in on-pitch situations, linking the clearly defined roles in the theatre form with the similar nature of the eleven on-field playing positions.

“When you’re an actor, as in commedia dell’arte, you have a role to play in the comedy and you can’t just leave that role and decide to do whatever you want. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s an important part of being part of being a civilized human being, is learning how to discover our social role among others even though we’re individuals,” Abrams declared.

“For players it’s the same thing. There’s no replacement for their individual skills but they have to work within a framework. They have a role within which they can really develop their talents but they have to conform to a role.

A 2010 exhibit at Montreal’s V Trimont Gallery entitled The Soccer Ballet featured over 60 of Abrams’ works.

“Traditional players with images always transformed in some way. Transposed so that the composition was set up by me, usually using references, and masked players. The mask sort of indicates the universal role, over generations. In soccer players we have a new generation of players but their functions don’t change that much. The individual player gets old, dies and the legacy passes on but that role is carried on from generation to generation.”

That show attracted the attention of Radio-Canada, who invited him to produce a work in real time during one of its broadcasts.

“They asked me to do a drawing for the opening of the World Cup so I did a drawing, which I’d practiced before, of course, of Nelson Mandela and two masked soccer players, one South African and one Mexican, with traditional masks from both countries playing with the new Johannesburg Stadium in the background.”

Abrams did the pastel in about the time it takes to play a match, with the cameras checking in at the beginning, middle and end of the process and came away determined that he was following (or being led) along the right artistic path.

“I felt like soccer was so much a part of me and my vision of the world that when it came back I couldn’t shake it. I realized that the connection between my art work and the movement of soccer players is just too strong to ignore.”

Still bitten by the soccer bug, Abrams has spent the past year producing a series of smaller works that combine a number of outside elements and imagery with the game itself but retain his interest in exploring the fluidity of motion in static, two dimensional terms.

What has resulted is an ongoing series of small pieces rendered by combining the use of watercolours, pastels and charcoal, mostly single figure images of players from around the globe and most of them are in motion. Some satisfy Abrams as completed works while others will serve as studies for works to come.

In some, players are seen in front of the flags from the nations they represent in international competition. Others emerge from a background the same colour as their kit. Still others are placed alongside or in contrast to images not related to soccer but linked to their cultural background. Medieval upper classes play against their social inferiors, Lionel Messi is portrayed with a golden halo in a style reminiscent of religious icons and Zinedine Zidane cavorts with Stone Age cattle on the walls of the caves at Lascaux.

“We’ll see what it evolves into,” he continued. “It’s also a process of learning about teams and the great players of the past. This phase of it is sort of a tribute to these players. They are important cultural figures for our time. There’s a beauty in their movements and in the colours that they wear and what it represents to us as we’re watching.”

An Impact fan who would rather see his team lose elegantly than win sloppily, he attends games with his son. Abrams is thrilled by the team’s desire to implant a more European-styled game in MLS competition.

“I’m very interested in the experiment right now in Montreal with trying to bring a European style of soccer to Montreal. I believe that the Impact, if not this season, very soon revolutionize North American soccer,” he ventured. “I’ve been to a number of games and I have a very good feeling about where it is going. Like I said I don’t know when it’s going to happen but I believe they’re going to surprise a lot of people.”

With this orientation, it is not surprising that Marco Di Vaio has been the subject of a few images.

“Di Vaio, from watching the games, I liked his movements. I thought he was thinking very well looking for openings that didn’t exist yet. His teammates have to know how he’s thinking. When you have a player of that calibre, you can’t say that everyone’s equal. You have to try to bring yourself up to that level. I think that’s what he represents even if he’s 36.”

Patrice Bernier, another multiple Abrams subject, impressed the artist away from the pitch as much as on it.

“Bernier is also, I think, a very intelligent player. You need players like that. Around the time I was doing the painting for the World Cup he was being asked to comment on the play. I wasn’t in the studio when he was there but I did watch regularly. He’s very intense and he’s very, very smart. He’s an excellent communicator too. “

There were a few other Impact players that caught Abrams eye last season so it seems there may well be more Impact images in the works.

“I like (Nelson) Rivas a lot but he was out most of last season. Felipe I like a lot too,” he said. “Felipe’s brilliant He’s so small but he’s so fast and he’s very, very smart.”

And who doesn’t like Christine Sinclair? As portrayed by Abrams she’s in full flight, her red jersey blending in and out of the similarly-shaded background, her determination clearly shining through in the indistinct image.

“She played a game in the ill-fated World Cup with a broken nose,” marvelled Abrams. “Apparently she’s the greatest goal-scorer in the history of American college soccer so she’s really something. It’s beautiful to watch her play, her incisiveness. I really admire her attitude and enjoy watching her play.

“I’m keeping the originals for now,” said Abrams when asked about the availability of his work. “People don’t know the texture of the originals so they really have to be shown in the proper situation. Really, they should be seen in a gallery. I’m waiting to have the right works and a large enough body of work that I’m happy with.”

In the interim, Abrams is arranging to have prints made of some of his recent work, making them available to the public.

“I’m starting in two stores, both with the same owner, one in St Jean sur Richelieu and the other in Quebec City. They’re going to be reproductions, signed and numbered but I’m not selling the originals because I don’t want to sell them in the wrong context. If someone’s interested they can always contact me.”

Visitors to Old Montreal might well run into Eugene Abrams as they meander the narrow streets in the coming months. He’ll be the portrait artist with 90 per cent of his display devoted to soccer players.

Abrams often posts images of his works on his blog (CLICK HERE).

Images from The Soccer Ballet can be viewed HERE.

His work can also be seen and purchased at these sites www.etsy.com/shop/thesoccerballet and http://www.galerievtrimont.com/en/artists.php#all