Pretty good film, but kinda slow in places. 🙂 (via Clube Espéria Arco e Flecha)
l’art pour l’art
24 April, 2014
L’ART POUR L’ART. ARTE POR EL ARTE. कला के लिए कला. KUNST UM DER KUNST WILLEN. etc.
William Russell Flint, plate from Le Morte D’Arthur, 1910-1911
“The devil made thee a shooter.” Romanticised Arthurian legends (the text is from Malory) from Sir William Russell Flint, famous for his representation of women. She doesn’t have a name, but safe to say that Launcelot is not her biggest fan:
Theo Van Doesburg, “The Archer”, 1919 (Museum Of Fine Arts, Budapest).
Doesburg was a pioneering member of De Stijl. From the GCA, “The artists grouped around De Stijl rejected natural depiction, and they held the architectonic abstract mode of composition, defined by horizontals and verticals, the only true path of painting. They saw the manifestation of “absolute harmony” in pure geometrical forms, the model for a new world to come… Doesburg’s 1919 Archer is a characteristic representative of the De Stijl principles. The vertically stressed figure of the archer defines the composition, and is built up from blue and black triangular, rectangular and pentagonal planes. The forces necessary to draw the arrow are concentrated at a single point: at the point of intersection of the verticality of the body and the horizontality of the stretched arm, and the transversals of the bow also run to this point. The dynamic implicit in this motion is heightened by the diagonality of the leg planted backwards.” (You can buy this one as a poster.)
Tomer Hanuka, Rambo First Blood Part 2, silkscreen print for Mondo.
Part of a commissioned series. I don’t know a lot about this guy or his interesting work, but take a look at his website.
More than you could ever want to know about archery in the Rambo films here.
Thanks to Archery Forever & Ever
Where is the Korean recurve team at #WC Shanghai?
23 April, 2014
Answer: Shooting… in Korea. The picture above was put up by the Korean Archery Association on their Facebook page today, as the ranking round took place at the Yuanshen Stadium.
Many people have noticed the absence of a Korean recurve team at the current Shanghai World Cup stage (although the KAA has sent a compound squad). It’s almost ‘our’ equivalent of Brazil or Germany deciding to skip the football World Cup. Meh, we’ll sit this one out. These are the facts: the dates of the Shanghai and Medellin stages were moved at the end of last year, and the KAA had already arranged for this week to be their selection shoot for the upcoming Asian Games. The above eight got picked today. Stick your money on them now. (There is compound archery in the Asian Games as well this year, but I guess they are picking that team some other time.)
The Korean team frequently skip one or more stages of the World Cup, presumably because they are sure they can get enough points for the grand final in two competitions. Apparently this year they will be in Medellin and Antalya, but not Wroclaw, because this year the Wroclaw date clashes with a national shoot in Korea. Clearly, they can’t be bothered with these tuppenny-hapenny international tournaments when there’s serious work to be done at home – and of course, the standard of competition is likely to be higher. It’s a wonderfully intransigent statement to the archery world. “You fit round us, we don’t fit round you.” But it’s also a shame for the archery audience, because it lessens the sporting spectacle when the biggest dog in the fight doesn’t show up.
I do like the exclamation-mark-riddled way Chrome has translated the KAA Facebook page below. Seems to sum the above up pretty well:
Thanks to fanio for pointing something out.
end of an era
Alison Williamson MBE, six-times Olympian, Olympic bronze medallist in 2004, and twice Commonwealth Games silver medallist, has retired. There will be no seventh Olympics. More here. Listen to her interview on BBC Radio Stoke below. It’s a good reminder of just how difficult it is to stay at the top in professional archery:
how we used to live
22 April, 2014
It’s British Pathé Tuesday! On the eve of the Shanghai World Cup stage 1, let’s have a look at what international archery competitions used to look like…
Patrick Huston (slight return)
20 April, 2014
greetings / arrows
18 April, 2014
Beautiful 1930s Japanese woodblock print new year’s greetings card. From here: http://www.fujiarts.com/cgi-bin/item.pl?item=382322
Thanks to Rob Galo.
bad archery pt. zzzzzz
16 April, 2014
See above. Oh dear. Dear oh dear oh dear. Where do we start?
This production at the RSC is most notable, of course, for the fact that it’s using archery on the poster. I mean, archery is relatively incidental in Peter Pan (apart from Tootles). Clearly, this Wendy Darling-focused production is going to show her drawing a bow as a shorthand demonstration of her spunky individualism. It’s still all that Jennifer Lawrence’s fault, or something. But there’s something in the water. You can’t advertise any fantasy-based thing at the moment without someone drawing a bow, usually badly, on the poster. I mean, this Hobbit image (below) is on a cardboard DVD dump bin at the entrance to my local supermarket. A children’s production at a major theatre is picking up on it. Seems to have become a self-perpetuating meme.
And that’s all good. Bad archery is good for archery.
Still, it’s not like selling any old thing with something healthful and awesome like archery is anything new. But you CAN get the technique right…
You can read about more of my bittersweet, mildly pointless moans about bad archery here. Thanks to Ms. Infinite Curve for finding the flyer.
Ki Bo Bae news – “as the principle goes, no exceptions is”
28 March, 2014
It’s a sad day for The Infinite Curve when Ki Bo Bae, reigning Olympic champion, and number two in the world, hasn’t made it onto the Korean squad for this year, after failing to make the top eight during the selection shoot this week. Perhaps even more surprising, Yun Ok Hee, last year’s World Cup champion and world number one failed to make the top eight too. This means neither is likely to shoot in the upcoming World Cup events or the Asian Games this summer. The top eight in women’s recurve included some better known names like Joo Hyun-Jung and Chang Hye-Jin, and the men’s list was pretty familiar. But there’s a big Ki Bo Bae shaped hole in the calendar this year.
It’s always difficult trying to pull information in English off the internet about Korean archers. I don’t think any of us who aren’t in the system have the faintest idea what it takes to get into, let alone stay in the Korean national team – it’s frequently described as ‘harder than winning the Olympics’.
Even via the joys of Korean -> English machine translation, it’s pretty brutal. “Aces are eliminated, the Association recommends always talk [when] the national team players are out. Exceptions, but when you start putting it into a precedent. Principles as the existing players to get the stimulus, can be daunting to new players. Yun Ok Hee, and Ki Bo Bae also a star through such a process.” Ouch.
The fact that the Korean sports press are asking these questions seems to suggest that the archery public are going to miss Ki and Yun, and there is a perception that the KAA should find a way to get them onto the team. It certainly would be a blow to the Asian Games to run a competition without two reigning champions in the ‘majors’. There is, however, a lot to be said for brutal transparency in sporting selection, given the opaque nature of the procedures employed by some archery NGBs and several other sports on a similar ‘level’ as archery e.g. this pre-London 2012 row over taekwondo.
Still, looking forward to that comeback in 2015, otherwise I guess it’s back to the bizarre entertainment shows. Unless it’s time for that previously mentioned move to London? We can dream.
on the line
Click for full-size. Best shot I got at my inter-county championships last Sunday. All indoor archery venues should have a balcony….