LA BALLE ET LE BALLON...

At the center of the exhibition is “The Athlete Series”  — a collection of 10 paintings, commissioned by art collector Robert Weisman, of the greatest sports figures of the late 1970s. At that time, the two most popular leisure time activities were sports and art, which Weisman said, quite frankly, don’t really have a connection.“Most people who are really into sports, are not really big into the art world, and most people in the art world really don’t like sports. … (The series) really opens up a new group of people that have never been in a museum (to the art world) and that was one of the reason why I did it,” he said.
Because Warhol “absolutely did not know the difference between a golf ball and a football,” Weisman said he picked out the athletes for the portraits, which include Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicklaus, Chris Evert, Rod Gilbert, Tom Seaver, O.J. Simpson, Dorothy Hamill, Pelé, Willie Shoemaker and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.