
Perhaps it’s no surprise that on the 50th anniversary of the iconic Muhammad Ali-George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” the historic and memorable boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire, the Norton Museum of Art brings Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, an exhibit showcasing artistic representations of the sport of boxing.
The title comes from a poem by Gabriele Tinti inspired by the ancient Greek sculpture Seated Boxer, in the National Museum of Rome.
The exhibit, on view through March 9, is a collaboration with New York galleries, The FLAG Art Foundation and The Church, and brings 60 new works and pieces by Hernan Bas, Amoako Boafo, Katherine Bradford, Zoë Buckman, Rosalyn Drexler, Jeffrey Gibson, Allegra Pacheco and Gary Simmons to South Florida. A companion book is also available.
“I had the idea for this show floating around in my Notes app on my phone,” says Arden Sherman, senior curator of contemporary art at the Norton. “When I learned of the exhibits in New York, I decided to join forces, rather than duke it out.”
Exploring the global sport and its cultural impact through the lens of 80 artists and 100 pieces of art from the 1870s through the present day, the exhibit features paintings, videos, sculptures and works on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Edward Hopper, Ed Ruscha and Alison Saar.
And, as Sara Cochran, founding chief curator of The Church, writes in the book: “We cannot honestly contemplate boxing without acknowledging its violence and pain as well as the skill and training that it demands, along with its symbolism, relationship to masculinity and the role of the audiences who witness this spectacle.”

The spectacle of the sport is on full display at the museum, with the goal of bringing in a non-traditional audience and extending the reach of the museum.
“This exhibit is unlike anything we’ve done before,” says Ghislain d’Humières, director and CEO of the Norton Museum of Art. “The exhibition has a raw intensity that visitors can feel and explores themes of power and resilience that speak to sports fanatics and art lovers alike.”
The show is organized into 11 different categories including: tools, the body, race and culture, in the ring, fantasy, sexuality, movement, practice and posture, artist as boxer, ephemera and women in boxing. Greeting you as you enter the exhibit are videos from the Library of Congress and a short humorous film by William K.L. Dickson and William Heise, made in 1894, of two cats boxing.
Also noteworthy is a large 2014 charcoal drawing by New York artist Shaun Leonardo of Mike Tyson titled Champ; an acrylic-and-silkscreen painting of Muhammad Ali, created by Andy Warhol in 1978; and a conceptual painting titled Weekly Pillow Fight Tournament by Hernan Bas, showing two young boys on a poster bed, symbolizing the boxing ring, in the sixth round of a pillow fight, feathers flying in the air.
Other highlights include the iconic Harry Benson photograph, Ali Hits George, taken at the 5th Street Gym in Miami in 1964 of Muhammad Ali posing with The Beatles; a 1985 Michael Halsband photograph of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat posing in boxing gear; and four original drawings by Ali in which he depicts the ring and the crowd, two created during the peak of his career in the mid-1960s and two from the 2000s, illustrating his ongoing love of the sport.

German-born and Rome-based artist Marcel Hüppauff’s painting, AC/JJ, a 2015 oil on canvas, depicts the 1916 boxing match in a bull-fighting stadium in Barcelona between Swiss provocateur Arthur Cravan and American Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson, who boxed during the early days of the Jim Crow era, experienced much racial hostility.
Excited to be a part of the show, Hüppauff, who flew in from Rome with his girlfriend, Ellen Wolf, also an artist, for the opening, says: “The exhibition is wonderful and there are so many amazing pieces in the show, especially, the Muhammad Ali drawings and the 2003 Ed Ruscha painting, ‘I Told You Nobody Ought Never to Fight Him.’”
Hüppauff, who first created AC/JJ for an exhibit about Cravan at 8.salon in Hamburg, Germany, grew up watching boxing matches with his dad late at night and training at a boxing gym for 20 years — “no fights, but a lot of sparring,” he says.
The artist takes inspiration from the round cards held up prior to each round in a boxing match. Using black and white to represent the two fighters, in the first round, they are both standing and wearing hats. By the sixth round the white figure is on the ground while the numbers turn more red each round.

The actual fight was fixed, and Cravan, a mediocre amateur boxer who was billed as the “European champion,” had no chance against Johnson. The match, which could have ended in the first round, lasted six, but made money for the two showmen, who were both looking for a payday.
“A boxing match is like a dance between opponents,” says Hüppauff. “Of course, the two fight against each other, but also with each other, just like the colors in a painting.”
Also fighting against each other are women. Both women artists and women boxers are represented.
Photographer Delilah Montoya’s Women Boxers: The New Warriors captures the female boxing community in the Southwest, raising issues of family, motherhood and gender stereotypes.
Rose Marie Cromwell’s Pugilista documents female boxers in Cuba. and British artist Zoë Buckman uses typical women’s domestic trappings, such as dishtowels, tablecloths and beads in Like Home, Like Something, to create a series of boxing gloves, challenging the notion of women in boxing.

Her neon, glass and leather sculpture, titled Champion, depicts boxing gloves as ovaries and makes a political statement about women’s reproductive rights.
Additional highlights include Jeffrey Gibson’s 2016 Manifest Destiny, a repurposed punching bag inspired by Native American culture, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1965 Pop canvas Sweet Dreams Baby!, and Michel Comte’s 1990 black-and-white print, Mike Tyson with Dove.
Strike Fast, Dance Lightly runs through March 9 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach. General admission: $18. Visit norton.org for more information.