11 of the Winter Olympics’ most striking images

7. Mass and motion

Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

Transformed by a photographer’s lens into smudgy speed lines accelerating behind the carefully calibrated push of her polished curling stone, Switzerland’s Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann, competing in a mixed-doubles match against Canada on day four of the Games, appears to have become one with the rock itself. Their consciousnesses have merged. Such melting of matter into mind and vice versa echoes the fluidifying of mass and motion which Umberto Boccioni’s boundary-blurring bronze sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), achieved – a work that is as philosophical as it is physical.

8. Human levitation

Cameron Spencer/ Getty Images

Fixed between grace and gravity, between choreographed control and calm capitulation to the laws of nature, a photo of Belarus-born Anastasiya Andryianava of Team Individual Neutral Athletes (individual Russian and Belarusian athletes), competing in Freestyle Skiing Aerials training on day eight of the games (14 February) at Livigno Snow Park, appears to test the limits of human levitation. Isolated in space, weightless yet accelerating, as if alchemised by the gnash of speed and icy air into pure aerodynamic form, her suspenseful suspension calls to mind 20th-Century Dalmatian Italian artist Tullio Crali’s “aeropittural” painting from 1939, Before the parachute opens, which likewise fuses the geometries of form and flight.

9. Dignity in devastation  

Robert Gauthier/ Getty Images

Images of US figure skater Ilia Malinin, whose acrobatic backflips have thrilled audiences and judges, falling to the ice during the men’s free skating singles competition on day seven of the games in Milan, reveal a dignity in devastation. With torso twisted and arms bracing against the marble-white surface, Malinin’s collapsed posture recalls that of the Roman statue of the Dying Gladiator (a 2nd Century-BC copy of a lost Greek sculpture from a century earlier), which captures exquisitely the awkward axels and rotations of a muscular mind grappling with defeat.

10. Floating in space

Ian MacNicol/ Getty Images

A photo of South Korean snowboarder Geonhui Kim competing in the halfpipe qualification rounds on day five of the games at Livigno Snow Park – his upended body crouched beneath his board and fixed forever in a firmament of frozen snowfall – captures a sense of exhilarating propulsion. Hanging weightlessly beneath the brand-name “NITRO”, emblazoned on his board, and surrounded by a dense glitter of luminous crystals, the athlete seems almost a floating molecule, vapourised into a veil of scattered elements. The choreographed suspension of colour and energy recalls the sublime shatter of shape and form in Jackson Pollock’s flung enamel masterpieces.

11. Shadows casting shadows 

Tobias Schwarz/ Getty Images

Shadows have a way of mechanising movement. Anonymised into darkness, a figure caught in shadow often seems essentialised into archetypal form – a body of borders that somehow transcends borders. Such is the power of a multinational photo of athletes taken on day three of the Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme). Shadows casting shadows, these stark yet indistinct figures recall the contours of Futurist experiments in stripping force from form. In Italian modernist Giacomo Balla’s 1913 painting, Abstract Speed, darkness and light are cogs of a chromatic machine that moves beyond movement.  

—

If you liked this story, sign up for the Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can’t-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.

For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.