Get to Know "Art But Make It Sports"
Art But Make It Sports (But Make It A Newsletter)?
Hello, readers. Parker here.
I’m back with another edition of You Know, the series where I try to bring attention to new newsletters from voices you (may) already know.
But first, here’s the part of the newsletter where I ask you to consider signing up for the free version if you’re new here and ask existing free subscribers to consider upgrading to the paid version. Now through the end of the month, you can get 25% off subscriptions by clicking this link:
You may know him from Twitter, or perhaps from features on PBS News Hour or in The New York Times. Today, I’m here to help promote his newsletter. His name is L.J. Rader, but you probably know him better as Art But Make It Sports. As the name suggests, Rader matches sports photos with works of art. It’s pretty remarkable.
Where did the idea for ArtButMakeItSports come from?
I’d go to museums and post photos with sports related captions to my personal Instagram, and eventually my friends pushed me to make a dedicated account. This was only a few months before covid, so when the pandemic hit, it gave me something to do. For a long time (multiple years), there were only a few hundred/few thousand followers across platforms – it started to really grow during the 2022 NBA Playoffs and really took off within the last few months of 2023/into 2024.
The idea itself mostly just came from seeing things through a sports lens, and a frustration with social media that constantly copied other content and didn’t contribute anything unique. Over time, I found myself shifting – instead of captioning artwork, say, one of Bacon’s screaming popes, with something like “Philip Rivers yelling,” I could just put it next to a photo of him yelling. And that really resonated with people so I ran with it.
Can you tell me a bit about your own background, about the person behind the account? People constantly accuse you of using AI even though you've demonstrated this isn't the case.
I work in tech (Product at a Sports data company), but I don’t have a technical background and I don’t code, so it’s pretty funny when people accuse me of using AI. Because there’s no AI in the public that can do this, the assumption is that I’ve somehow created something from scratch. If you ask anyone I work with, they’d politely tell you there’s no way in hell I’d be able to do that. [laughs] And even if I did, you can bet I’d apply that skill to something lucrative/in a professional career. Plus, the account predates any of the AI models that are currently available. It’s really just me and a knowledge of art history and an ability to memorize artwork and recognize patterns.
I’m not traditionally schooled in art history; I took a class in college, and the rest comes from going to museums/galleries and reading books/Wikipedia. I just love consuming images of art and trying to figure out how to connect it to sports (and now, other things, like politics). The more photos I can mentally bank, the more fun it gets to make the connections.
Where do people know you from? Obviously, the account is on Twitter/X/whatever, but have there been specific tweets from big name accounts that really helped boost your visibility?
There have been a number of articles written, and a few podcasts I’ve appeared on over the years. The press links are at artbutmakeitsports.com, and then this podcast definitely moved the needle. Also, my pinned tweet on Twitter was from an appearance on Pablo Torre’s show. I don’t really do any outreach – all the press and such have just come organically, which feels right. Otherwise, I think I’d have to view this as more a job than a hobby, and at that point, I don’t know how fun it would be anymore.
You started your newsletter back in December. Why a newsletter? What do you use it for?
I love writing, and social media isn’t the best platform for allowing me to flex those muscles. I also want to examine sports photography through interviews with the photographers whose work I feature, and the newsletter is a great canvas for that. I also get asked for insight into my process, so I’ve started publishing pieces on that. Finally, I get a significant amount of feedback that the account has helped people learn more about artists, so examining figures like Clyfford Still and documenting why I love and feature their work.
That’s it for me today. As always, thank you for reading!
Parker
About this suspicion that "He must be using AI", there was a story years ago about the Daily Show, and how they manage to find just the perfect Fox News clip for every occasion (the one from a year ago that completely contradicts what Fox News is saying today, for example). And it turns out it's just this one guy who works for the Daily Show who watches a lot of Fox News and just has a really good memory. Amazing what mere humans can do unaided by technology, we shouldn't sell ourselves short.
This is the kind of account that makes social media fun, and there's far too few of them like that.