An Interview With The Creator Of ArtButMakeItSports
The ultimate art x sports collab.
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I think many people (myself included) would agree that there are countless moments in sport that deserve to be hung in the Louvre.
LeBron making his record-breaking three. Strug hobbling to victory at the 1996 Olympics. Messi finally winning a World Cup.
One of those people who may agree is LJ Rader, the creator of the viral Twitter and Instagram accounts, ArtButMakeItSports.
Rader mastered the art of pairing iconic sports moments with pieces of art from his catalog of over 7,000 images of art he keeps stored on his phone—and even more in his brain.
An El Greco paired with a Wade? A Haring paired with a James? Or how about a Super Bowl halftime performance with a Picasso?
Rader amassed a following of over 150,000 across Twitter and Instagram since he launched the accounts right before the pandemic.
He found his niche at the intersection of art and sports to be able to pull off something so original in a sea of stolen memes and duuuppess on the Internet.
I spoke with Rader over Zoom about how his love of art and art history coupled with his interests in sports led him to launch ArtButMakeItSports, how he organizes his digital catalog of art, and more.
Read our conversation below and be sure to follow Rader on Twitter and Instagram.
ArtButMakeItSports: The Interview
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What led you to start ArtButMakeItSports?
I've always been a sports fan. I've actually always worked in sports for my professional career and then always been an amateur art fan. My grandma used to take me to museums growing up and I've always had a side appreciation for art.
I took a class in college and I remember I told my parents I wanted to minor in art history. They laughed at me like, “What are you going to do with that?” Which is funny, because they were probably right—in terms of I wasn't really looking to get into the arts world—I just wanted to learn more. So I've ended up actually teaching myself a whole bunch without being traditionally trained in art history.
I go to lots of museums and galleries and shows. Being able to live in New York, there's always art coming through. I traveled a lot for work and whenever I'd go to new cities, I'd go to different museums. That's where the art side comes from.
A few years into Instagram being a thing—I've never been big on social media taking pictures of myself and posting them, but I would take pictures at museums and give them stupid captions. That's sort of how I used Instagram.
Over time, I had a number of friends that said like, “Oh, you should make this its own account.” What the account is now is very much the visual mashups, but at the start it was just captions and then writing on the actual images. I’d say three or four months before COVID started, I made it its own account and started posting there.
Then COVID hit and I was super bored. It gave me something to do, which was fun. I started doing side-by-sides and realized that's what resonated with people. Then started doing those exclusively. A lot of the images that I use are actually pictures that I've taken.
Do you find the art first or the sports moment first?
When I first started, it was very much the art first. I would take pictures at the museums—100, 150 from that museum of photos that I took—and then I would give them sports captions. Looking back, I think it was funnier—to me at least—because it's harder.
Now it's flipped, where I have the art and I have the archive of the art in my phone and in my head. But it starts with a sports image now mostly because what I found is that the account gets more traction and people are more interested if you're doing either an iconic sports photo, but mostly a sports image from something that is happening right in the moment.
That's sort of how Twitter especially works. You've got people that are sitting on Twitter while watching a game, having a conversation about that given game. If you can inject your piece of culture into the timeline, into the conversation, it's what people are talking about already. That stuff tends to do better.
Now it starts with a sports image. It’s either something that I see while watching a game, but now just people constantly tag the account, so I get a lot of sports images that come through there. I have sports photographers that I've become friends with and friendly with through the account and they'll send stuff that they think could work.
Sometimes, I'm just watching game, I immediately know that's whatever piece of artwork. It's either a piece of artwork that I've taken a photo of and know or a famous piece of artwork. Then I'll go and try to find the highest resolution of that given piece. Sometimes it's a theme in art history.
The Lamentation of Christ, you have a wide range of different artists’ interpretations of that, but they're all very similar. It’s then looking through photos of The Lamentation that either I know I have a few on my phone, but then sometimes it's just Googling The Lamentation of Christ and then finding which one perfectly—or almost perfectly—matches that sports moment. That tends to be me. I've got a pretty good catalog of various art history.
There's the Kansas State photo that I did. Various interpretations of The Last Judgment tend to show with the ball and so this is where I'm not classically trained in art. I don't quite know what it all means, but I've seen that.
Finally, it might be an artist’s style. That tends to be for more of the abstract ones. Then not quite maybe knowing exactly which piece, but then starting to look up their portfolio and maybe through that you see another artist and then it comes together there. A lot of people ask if it's AI. I don't use any AI. I use Google Lens to get the title, the artist, and the year
To get the credits?
Yeah, so you see here [gestures to phone] this one, Meme Fuel.
How many photos are in Meme Fuel?
Meme Fuel’s got right now 7000 and then there's a few other folders with a few additional thousand.
In those folders, do you organize them in any way?
I've been telling myself I would go through and organize and I've never gotten around to it. Now it's too big. It's broken out by where I took the photo and uploaded it. It's in chunks of the museums and shows and galleries I've been. Part of the secret sauce is that I have a pretty good recollection of that entire folder and know where things are, which is kind of cool.
I should hire my friend or hire somebody to help me. I work in sports data and technology and work with a bunch of engineers and they've all said like, “Oh, we need to go through this folder and just go through a tagging exercise and then make it super easy.”
That's kind of what I do in my head and what makes it fun for me. I don't know why I would do the account if it wasn't just me.
When did you know the account it was gaining traction?
It didn't really blow up until the NBA playoffs last year. It started out as my friends, my parents, and my mom's friends.
I had all these different tactics of hashtags and searching for sports art and liking photos. It was a grind at the start. Heading into the start of last year, I think Instagram had like three or four thousand. Twitter, maybe one or two thousand. It's definitely blown up a lot recently.
I will say the content has gotten a lot better. I've definitely refined it down to be cleaner and the tactics of making stuff in the moment has definitely helped it a blow up. There were a few posts of NBA playoffs stuff that blew up. I knew pretty early on I was onto something.
There were a bunch of sports media people that were were into it. I work in sports and I've spent way too much time in my life on Twitter. I know the content is good and works for this. So I knew it would only be a matter of time, but it's been fun to see it explode.
Are there any particular posts that has been the hardest to find an art match for?
It’s actually the one that's pinned to the Twitter. My favorites are the historic sports photos that you can match.
There was one a few weeks ago when Pat Bev got the camera from the crowd and showed it to the ref. I knew this obscure painting—that I don't even know the name of—that I saw at the Louvre.
When I saw it, I was like, “This is going to be something at some point.” It’s a photo of an angel holding a painting in the painting, showing it to somebody. I immediately thought of that. Then I put it out there and it blew up, which was cool.
You mentioned a lot of NBA. Is that your sport of choice or do you have a preference?
I'm a big Knicks fan and NBA fan. Baseball is my favorite sport, but the kids don't like baseball and it's a little hard to meme.
Basketball is so easy. It provides constant inspiration. You have movement. You have a limited number of players, but they're confined to a space. It’s a dance, right? And art is a dance, too.
Soccer is also fun to do. I've gotten messages like, “How dare you not do rugby?” I don't watch rugby. If you send the image and it conjures something up, I'll use it. But this is my hobby. I'm just doing images of things that I care about.
This is kind of a cool step to be at. The account has a responsibility to cover everything.
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