The Fine Art of Mixed Martial Arts: A Conversation with Chris Rini
The nature of art is changing. Pen and pad have been replaced by stylus and iPad, as the modern world’s magnetic pull has proven too strong for even the staunchest traditionalists. This, perhaps, is both natural and inevitable, the artistic equivalent of me writing this missive on a computer and not on a typewriter.
\The world changes and we change with it.
Other shifts are more concerning, striking at the very heart of what art is. We see it daily as we attempt to hire creators to illustrate books at Hybrid Shoot. There is a generation of artists who don’t actually produce any original work the way we typically think about such things, instead inserting still photographs in computer programs like Prisma, PhotoShop or whatever the Chinese government is currently using to master their facial recognition programs, applying a variety of filters, and calling it a day.
Are these computer generated images actually art? That’s a question too big for a meager mind like mine, but a pressing one, especially as AI-generated writing is on the verge of making a major impact in the world of news and entertainment.
It’s with all this as a swirling backdrop that I approached Chris Rini’s new book The Fine Art of Violence Vol. 3, a fantastic collection of art and words chronicling the year 2021, the 29th annum of the modern era of mixing martial arts. Joining Rini are artists Marco Bucci and Juni Ba and a diverse collection of writers like Julie Kedzie, Tunisha Singleton and Sean Sheehan, all contributing thoughtful essays about the year in fights.
But, with respect to the wordsmiths, it’s the art that stars here, with Rini’s signature style all but leaping off the page, sparse, flowing lines perfectly capturing the beauty inherent in even the most violent of sports.
Rini’s art is the opposite of computer generated perfection. You’ll find no photo realism here—and yet the way these images perfectly capture the movement of a fighter, stealing single moments out of time and delivering them for posterity, is more remarkable for its absence. This isn’t real. It’s true. And truth is such a rare gift—it stands out in a world where even the art work is covered in a sheen of artifice.
I sat down with Rini (he may have been standing, as this was via the magic of the internet) to discuss his art, how his style and approach have changed over the years and what “normal” people think about his fascination with violence.
Jonathan Snowden: If I understand correctly, these are charcoal drawings that you've scanned and then added color and details to on the computer? This is a change for you right? Did you start doing wood blocks? Am I imagining that? Assuming it is a change, was there any trepidation at taking something that was successful and reinventing your process?
Chris Rini: I started out doing woodblocks and eventually burned out my arm. It never really healed so I went back to drawing.
That was a difficult time because I'd built up a lot of my identity around the materials I used and had to come to terms with what makes me an artist.
I was able to return to my roots of pen & ink, charcoal, and make consistently good work that way. In 2020 I read an interview with an artist, can't quite recall who, but the lesson from their career was "adapt or die."
So I bought an iPad and started learning to make work digitally. The work in this latest book was a choice to make something that would look good all together because I didn't really feel like I could make a single great piece.
Jonathan Snowden: As a non-artist it fascinates me to see this work that is exaggerated in some ways anatomically but manages to capture action beats in a way that feels very accurate nevertheless. How do you apply photorealistic movement to what is otherwise a not especially detailed drawing? Do you work from a screenshot? Memory? Are these actual moments or imagined moments based on real life?
Chris Rini: This is tough. I have a lot of feelings about realism that are partially art critiques and insecurity about my own ability to do it. Most of it is devoid of life.
When I was getting serious about my artistic approach I looked back at college life drawings (nude model, live in the classroom) and the two to five minute poses were always what I used as the basis for paintings. Something about that limited time forced me to crystalize my own style.
That's what led me to doing the live fight night charcoal sketches. Those started as a joke and after a couple years they became the basis for more developed artworks, ink on paper at first, and now digital paintings.
I've worked from screenshots, and sometimes it's better to work from low-res or blurry ones. That keeps me from copying and instead really thinking about what "happened" instead of "what i saw." The fight night stuff mostly happens when I take a picture in my mind.
With the digital paintings, I like that I make a charcoal drawing and then 'paint' the drawing so things keep getting another step removed from the fight.
Jonathan Snowden: I've seen on your social media that you've kind of been called to account by artist friends about your relationship with violence. Do you find it hard to communicate to non-fight fans why fighting moves you so deeply and why you devote so much of your creative output to it?
Chris Rini: I wouldn't say it's hard because it's such a polarizing topic that people really do want to learn more even if they're put off by the theme.
The more people push back the more I'm forced to think about my own work and it's caused me to realize that I've got to show different sides of the fight. For example, one thing that made me a fan early on was watching fighters hug after the fight ended. It was surprising and changed my perspective from a voyeuristic one to something more complex.
But I never made paintings of that hug! Because of these convos, that has become one of the things I've got to included in the work, not just the conversations.
There are other formal artistic ideas behind choosing to make work about fighting which I've found are very accessible to non fight fans. If I can make good art, then it should work for people who know "that's Pettis vs Horiguchi" and people who don't know MMA at all.
You can see Chris Rini’s work regularly at Bloody Elbow. His new book, The Fine Art of Violence Vol. 3, is available at his website.