It's been a big week in art ... with Jim Pavlidis

If there’s one thing this strange season has revealed, it’s the awkward fact that the game of footy has little to do with the business of footy.

AFL General Manager of Football Operations Steve Hocking admitted as much on radio last weekend when, in answer to a question about the game’s aesthetic in low scoring matches, he spoke only of big television ratings.

Roman Emperor Vespasian also relished a financial opportunity, so when tanners started taking urine from sewers to soften animal skins, he taxed the urine. “Pecunia non olet” – “Money does not stink.”

Transgressions to the AFL hub rules threaten to further foreshorten an already shortened season.

Italian Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli was the acknowledged master in the use of foreshortening, his fresco The Damned Cast Into Hell is a masterpiece of claustrophobic desperation.

Life for souls in the AFL hub isn’t as grim, for while it might feel like an eternity, in reality they only need to endure six more weeks.