Got a Viral Sports Moment? He's Got a Painting for That

One of the most viral moments of the first round of the NBA playoffs came when 76ers star Joel Embiid, lying on the court, kicked Brooklyn’s Nic Claxton in the groin. News headlines and video clips of the kick (for which Embiid received a flagrant foul) went supernova. 

But when he saw the play, LJ Rader thought of something other than the kick: a work of art called St. Michael Killing the Dragon. The Biblical painting from the late 15th century, based on a passage from the book of Revelations, depicts Archangel Michael, commander of the Army of God, slaying the seven-headed dragon (each head represents one of the seven deadly sins). The painting is often seen as a metaphor for good versus evil.  

Rader then posted the images—one of Embiid and Claxton, the other of Michael and the dragon—side-by-side on his Instagram and Twitter accounts, both of which carry the handle @artbutmakeitsports. 

“There are a lot of similarities of artists equating to athletes in various styles and time periods,” Rader says. “ They’re not all that different: you’re capturing movement in some ways in art; in sports, you’re sort of doing the same thing.”

Rader, 33, has worked in the sports world for over a decade as a writer, reporter and data analyst, traveling often. Every time he visited a new city, he’d stop in a museum and take photos of various works that reminded him of things he saw in his day job. 

Four years ago, he started sharing his observations on social media. Since then, he’s picked up over 150,000 followers with posts that tease out the connections between sporting moments and art imagery, whether it’s a 76ers win over the Celtics paired with Jacob Lawrence’s Massacre in Boston painting from 1955, or Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 painting The Sower split with an image of WNBA veteran Sue Bird, which matches not only visually but, as Rader says, depicts how “Sue Bird is sowing the league for the next generation.”

The more layers to the parallels, the better. “I think that’s part of why the account resonates,” Rader says. “It’s two things people see as diametrically opposite: you can’t be an artist if you’re into sports; you can’t play sports if you’re into art.”

Here, Rader shares the story behind how his viral social media accounts connect those two worlds.

GQ: So where did this idea start?

LJ Rader: I tend to view things from a sports lens, whether it’s thinking about sports for my job or going to a museum and seeing a piece of artwork and thinking, ”This reminds me of something I saw in sports.”

From the art side, it coincided with the start of Instagram. Taking selfies and pictures of food isn’t my scene, but I enjoy going to museums and taking pictures of artwork. So on my personal Instagram, I started posting pictures of art that I saw, viewing it from a sports lens in the way that I wrote the captions. Over the years, my friends said, “You should make this its own account.” I finally did that in December of 2019. For a while, it was either captioning or putting captions on actual images. Over time, I realized the posts that resonated were the side-by-side model comparisons.

When you started, did you want viewers to appreciate the art, or the sports moment being depicted?

When it started, it was very much the art. I have batches of photos from museums, and I’d go through and caption them with sports captions. Over time, I really focused on the side-by-sides.  The audience now is so diverse, you have to get the sports side, too.

There are millions of sports moments worldwide every day. And millions of pieces of art throughout history. That feels overwhelming. How do you choose which images you want to use on a given day?

When I started the side-by-sides, I’d use old sports photos or photos I’d see online. What really started to resonate were photos of either things that had just happened in games, or in sports culture and news. I noticed that the ones I posted on Twitter in real time got more exposure, which makes sense. If you see a fight break out in a game and five minutes later there’s a meme about it, you’re going to want to share it and inject into the moment and conversation. 

So if a fight breaks out on the court, you’re jumping on it right away to find the corresponding art. How long does it take you to find an image?

It depends. Sometimes I know immediately. That comes from either a massive folder of photos (over 7,000) that I have on my phone of artwork I’ve photographed, or famous pieces that I haven’t necessarily seen in person but I just know. Sometimes it takes me 15 or 20 minutes.

There was this Kansas-K State brawl where a player picked up a chair and there was a woman clinging to his leg. I was like, “Okay, I’m pretty sure this is Massacre of the Innocents," and it ended up working out really well. That was just me knowing a specific piece of art.

Sometimes it’s seeing something that reminds me of a specific artist's style. The dress that the WNBA commissioner wore to the draft this year, I looked at it and I was like, that is almost certainly a Paul Klee, so then [the job was] finding the Paul Klee that ends up matching. 

So how do you even know when it is a sports image you’re going to use?

I don’t know. That’s part of the, I don't want to call it secret sauce, but I’ve done so many now that I can kind of tell. I won’t waste time going down a rabbit hole unless it’s something I know I have a good shot at arriving at.

Sometimes the side-by-side has matching coloring; at other times, it seems like you’re trying to match the people in terms of their body angle and posture. And sometimes it seems like you want an image that mirrors Tom Brady’s cheekbones.

Colors definitely help. Emotion also helps. There’s one I did a week ago for the AC Milan-Inter Milan game—it’s the two players looking off into the distance, and it matches on emotion.

On a Rudy Gobert dunk where his arm was raised and he had a bunch of figures underneath, it looked like Raft of the Medusa, which is by a French painter. And Gobert is French. The more layers that can be baked in, the better. 

I did one last week when a Kansas City Royals baseball player was puking. There’s a random Goya painting that I saw in Germany of a person puking at a picnic. It doesn’t match one-to-one other than the act of puking, but that act works well enough. 

I tend to be pretty picky. But over time, I've relaxed a bit in terms of needing it to be very clear—like the one of Ja Morant waving his gun side-by-side with Liberty Leading the People. That’s not a visual one-to-one, it’s more thematic, but it resonated. To me, it’s like, alright, this one is stupid, it doesn't look the same, but people don't care.

Do you care if the athlete is recognizable?

People will tag me in pictures they want me to match, and if I can get a one-to-one and it’s great, and I'll post it. But if not, there’s really no point, because it’s much more niche than what people come to expect. That being said, I like to do different sports and try to feature a blend of everyone.

So we’ll see some Women’s World Cup this summer?

Hell yeah. Women’s soccer gets the most traction, in terms of comments and shares and the athletes themselves. Alex Morgan re-shared one of the ones about her. Soccer and basketball, men’s or women’s, tend to be global. The account has a pretty strong international following now. So if you post a baseball one, you’re limiting your audience a bit. 

Do you ever hear from the athletes who you’re posting about? 

I’ll tag the athletes, and maybe they'll double tap and like the post. There’s two members of the Bills O-line who are big fans. I did one for them and they were pumped about it.

I don’t often hear from the athletes, but I do from sports photographers. I always try to credit the photographers because, to me, they are just as much an artist as the artwork artist. During games, when editorial outlets share these photos and they hit my timeline and people send them to me, I’ll credit the photographers.

Are you watching and reading about sports 24/7?

I can’t watch every game. Sometimes, someone will Tweet a picture and then someone else will respond with the account’s handle. And then it drops into my notifications. That happens 10 to 20 times a day. Sometimes people will DM images, too, and ask if I can turn it into something.

Is there one that’s gone particularly viral?

Honestly, it’s always the next one. The last NBA playoffs, when Luka [Doncic] was staring down [Devin] Booker, that one blew up. That was the most viral. I watched it live, but I waited until the series ended to post it. 

I don’t want to oversaturate the Instagram account. I’ll post everything on Twitter. If it makes Instagram, it’ll be on Twitter, but if it’s on Twitter, it might not be on Instagram. I see Instagram as more a museum/library, whereas Twitter is just firing stuff off.

No TikTok?

No. If someone reading this piece knows how to do TikTok and wants to do it for me … but there’s a line I have to draw. There are places on the internet that I just don’t go.

So will this be your full-time job soon? 

I’m definitely never going to do advertising; I appreciate keeping the integrity of the account. I’ve done a few collaborations. I feel like I'd get burned out if it were my actual job. That being said, it would be fun to make money off of it. 

I don’t say this to be arrogant, but every day, there are comments that are like, “This is the only reason I’m still on Twitter,” and “This is the best account on the Internet.” If people like it that much, it’d be cool to make money off of it. There are a few things I’m experimenting with. I was asked to attend the Palm Springs Art Fair, where I curated a booth and printed one of my pieces. It’s sitting in my apartment, it’s pretty sweet. I’m thinking about potentially selling prints or paintings. Or making it more subscription-based, since that’s what content creators do these days. We’ll see.