Forget about “Deflategate,” the seemingly endless discussion of New England Patriot Tom Brady’s suspension for having “general awareness” of the deflating of footballs. What about Brady’s role in the major art moment last August in Boston? You remember—the drawing of Brady by courtroom artist Jane Rosenberg. Did Rosenberg’s sketch during Brady’s hearing do the handsome quarterback justice?
The sketch immediately earned a place in popular art history—right next to (online at least) Munch’s Scream. It also promptly became a hot property. The Sports Museum in Boston wants to borrow it, and potential buyers are bidding for it. Is the artist going to get rich on this?
“I have not decided what I’m going to do with it,” Rosenberg told Time Magazine. “I don’t have a clue what it’s truly worth. This isn’t a normal sketch I’m selling to some assistant US attorney. It might be a different arena entirely — sports memorabilia.”
Should this art event go uncommented on by the Amherst community?
We didn’t think so. We asked Amherst’s experts to weigh in.
Reece Foy, Class of 2018, quarterback on the Amherst football team: “I love the drawing because I don’t like Tom Brady. If you can get a little chink in his armor, why not try?”
David E. Little, director and chief curator of the Mead Art Museum: “Brady definitely looks bad: a sour expression with gray hair and a rumpled suit aren’t how we’re used to seeing him at all. The courtroom artist might consider Professor Carol Keller’s drawing course this semester.”
Billy McBride, assistant athletic director-diversity & inclusion/senior coach: “Is it obvious that Jane Rosenberg is not a football fan? Or has she just had enough of the Patriots winning too much for her own consumption? As in, ‘What’s a New England Patriot’s favorite snack?’ ‘Cheetos!’ Implying that behind the glamour is this filling but tasteless identity.”
Rachael Abernethy, Class of 2016, history major and member of the Amherst women’s soccer team: “Finally! A work that intersects the realms of art, sport, and politics. It is fully within Rosenberg’s creative agency to highlight certain light and shadows on Brady’s face as she so chooses. Whether her choice accurately illustrates the live figure is an aesthetic judgment I do not make lightly. And yet, here it is: Tom Brady is more handsome in person.”
Bettina Jungen, senior curator and curator of Russian art, Mead Art Museum: “Maybe Brady wishes himself into the utopian dimension of Popova’s Composition. He certainly looks as if he wanted to be somewhere else. The artwork’s alternative space, which does not reflect the real world, is an expression of the Russian avant-garde’s energetic tension and hope for new life and art. In the courtroom the party is over. What remains are the angular shapes and the brown paper.”
Bradley Bailey, curatorial teaching fellow, Mead Art Museum: “I wouldn’t call it a faithful rendering. It has a Toulouse-Lautrec air about it. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s [19th-century] pastels people appear monstrous because of the Parisian gaslights, and perhaps the fluorescent bulbs of the courtroom are the 21st-century equivalent.”
— Written by Sheila Flaherty-Jones
Mead Musings 