Common Practice

The first, comprehensive, illustrated publication to explore the relationship between basketball and contemporary art

From David Hammons' Higher Goals and Robert Indiana’s Mecca Floor to the more recent works of Nina Chanel Abney and Titus Kaphar, basketball has proven an especially popular sport in art. Whether in the depiction of players, abstract use of motifs, or as a means of examining social inequality and political justice, this collection takes readers on a journey to understand the game of basketball, not only as a physical activity played between a series of lines, but also as a reflection of a greater human experience.
Gathering work by more than 250 artists from the 20th century to now, this volume reveals a little-discussed point of overlap between art and sport, in part to be found in the titular phrase “common practice”―“practice” in the sense of “to perform an activity or exercise regularly in order to improve or maintain one’s proficiency.” This book argues that the need to rehearse, discover and explore through the act of doing makes these two very different ideas of perfecting one’s craft very similar.
Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, Elaine de Kooning, Keith Haring, David Hammons, Barkley Hendricks, Robert Indiana, JR, KAWS, Titus Kaphar, Jacob Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Pfeiffer, Alex Prager, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Andy Warhol, Ai Weiwei and Wendy White.
Carlos Rolón is a visual artist known for his multi-disciplinary practice whose work explores themes of craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, identity and its relationship to art history and the institution.
Dan Peterson is the founder of Project Backboard, a nonprofit organization devoted to renovating basketball courts and improving public spaces across the country through art and community.
John Dennis is an artist and filmmaker, and creative director at NXTHVN―an arts incubator and residency program based in New Haven, CT.