By Chris Fuchs
A 14-foot-bronze, nude sculpture of a player posing in the serving stance honoring the late tennis legend Arthur Ashe was unveiled Monday evening, the first day of the US Open, outside the stadium that bears his name in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
“The backhand, forehand, volley, overhead and lob are all shots a player makes to respond to what another player gives him,” said Eric Fischl, the artist commissioned to design the sculpture. “But the serve – that's the only play in tennis where the player has full control.”
The unique challenge for Fischl, a 52-year-old artist who has designed all of his sculptures in the nude, was to create a monument not only to Ashe's extraordinary tennis career but also to his lifelong avocation as a humanitarian.
Fischl, himself a tennis player, along with 100 artists submitted designs to a selection committee in 1997 to create the sculpture. Eventually, the 13-member committee, chosen for its knowledge of art and love of tennis, narrowed down the list of artists to nine, all of whom were required to submit specific proposals. The committee ultimately approved of Fischl's nude sculpture.
“I thought for a long time about the problem of how to portray someone like Arthur Ashe, who was larger than life,” Fischl said. “I knew of his career off the court and of his devotion to issues involving human rights.”
An unflagging defender of human rights, Ashe led a life of altruism up until he died in 1993 of AIDS, which he contracted through a tainted blood transfusion. Ridding a segregated South Africa of racism and poverty as well as opening the game of tennis to children of all races were but two issues of immense importance to Ashe.
As an accomplished tennis player, Ashe earned the distinction of becoming the first black man to win the US Open in 1968. Throughout his career, Ashe clinched 33 titles, including the Wimbledon Crown, defeating the on-the-court iconoclast Jimmy Connors.
Despite his long list of accolades, Ashe always managed to remain coolly modest. Even so, his wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, believes that the sculpture encapsulates everything for which Ashe stood and that he likely would have approved of it.
“I am pleased that the figure celebrates the life of an African-American man in a park that serves an incredible mosaic of ethnic groups in this great city,” she said. “Perhaps some of the children who see this figure will understand more clearly their own potential for achievement and grace.”
