Imagine visiting a famous art gallery. In the first room, you find a row of classical sculptures with perfect human figures carved out of marble. In the second room, you find a series of Impressionist paintings, each one a blur of bright and beautiful colours. In the third room, you find a tennis court, where two players are competing in a match.

Perhaps that sounds unlikely. However, writers often liken tennis matches to works of art. This is especially true at Wimbledon, with its grass courts, uniformed umpires and players dressed in white. As this year's tournament begins, journalists will compare the players making elegant shots to painters, musicians, and poets.

But it is not just the way that tennis looks. The matches also have a strong sense of narrative. They are divided into three or five sets, which resemble the acts in a play. Audiences at Wimbledon will often laugh, gasp, cry and break out in applause, just like people at the theatre.

The boundary between art and sport is difficult to define. Take rhythmic gymnastics, where dancers create beautiful displays with sparkling costumes and coloured ribbons, even though they are then judged and the winners awarded medals. The same is true in figure skating, artistic swimming, and the new Olympic category of Breaking.¹

But even more well-known sports have creative elements. For instance, football is called the beautiful game and boxing the noble art. Horse racing was once a popular subject for painters. Novels, essays and poems have been written about games such as cricket and baseball.

However, just because sports can be like art, this does not mean that sports is art. To most people, a work of art is an object like a sculpture or book, created "to express serious meanings or ideas of beauty".²

Matches are competitions. However, there are no winners or losers when it comes to poems and plays. As the writer Olivia Laing has argued, "competition has no place in art".³ Instead, art is an end in itself.

Yet athletes, like artists, must practice their craft for many years. Some of them acquire exceptional physical skills, and then perform in a way that looks effortless. According to arts promoter Quentin Ring, poetry and American football can "both reach a state of grace".⁴

There are many snobs when it comes to sports. They think that art is where people search for meaning or try to understand their lives. By contrast, watching sport is merely entertainment.

However, games can also offer things that are missing in the arts. For example, they bring people together and get them exercising outside, which is good for mental and physical health.⁵ When a team is doing well, sports can give an entire city or country something to hope for together.

Just ask the fans travelling to Germany for the European Football Championship, to Paris for the 2024 Olympics, or to London for this year's Wimbledon tournament. If they are lucky, they will observe skill and beauty, and feel emotion equal to that provoked by the greatest works of art.

Can sports be art?

Yes: Athletes are as skilful as artists. Games are as exciting as stories. Winning or losing has as much emotion as love or loss. There is no difference between sport and art.

No: There may be similarities between art and sport, but they are not the same. When we want to understand our lives, we turn to films and novels, songs and paintings.

Or... Sport is valuable whether or not it is a work of art. Games can give people a reason to exercise, while tournaments can give whole countries a reason to hope.