IT’S CRUDE, BUT JOYFUL... AN ART CRITIC’S VERDICT

YOU can’t seriously compare it to a Pollock or a Kandinsky, but Andy Murray is certainly making a different kind of contemporary art.

However crude, it’s joyful and there’s a strong, athletic abstract resemblance to a match – with the ball being shot from the background to the foreground.

It almost looks to me like he’s used the ball as a paint brush. It’s very vibrant, very energetic, very different. He was probably covered in paint by the end. Is it a piece of performance art? I tried to see if I could see the scuff of the ball and the heel of his shoe in the paint.

It could even be seen as a self-portrait in an abstract way because it represents him, the tennis player.

I could almost see him with racquet in one hand and his tennis ball covered in paint in the other, whacking a ball against the canvas. But we’ve got to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek. I wouldn’t imagine that he’s saying, ‘I’m an artist’. But perhaps his wife Kim Sears, who is a fantastic dog portraitist, has had a great influence on him.

If Pollock had picked up a tennis racquet we wouldn’t have said he’s going to win Wimbledon tomorrow. Maybe Andy was getting some aggression out, maybe he wanted to burn off some energy. I think he was just having a bit of fun. Let’s just hope he had plenty of plastic around him. ESTELLE LOVATT Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and art history lecturer at Hampstead School of Art