The Big Read: A few days ago, I tuned my car radio to Kaya FM and listened to the ebullient team from Good Morning Gauteng fielding calls. The phone-in topic was "stalkers", a subject that produced anecdotes about all manner of obsessive, dysfunctional or otherwise unhealthy relationships.

I followed the discussion with interest; I was driving to the station's Newtown studios, where I was due to join DJs Kgomotso Matsunyane, Ndumiso Ngcobo and company to discuss the launch of Sport versus Art: A South African Contest. Moreover, it occurred to me, the book (a multi-author volume including contributions from sports journalists, arts practitioners, academics and other writers) is really a record of just such a relationship: one that is passionate and tempestuous, by turns a fruitful union and a bickering rivalry, between companions who have been divorced and reconciled many times over.

The key word is, of course, obsession. Many sports fans are obsessed with the notion that artists are an effete, elitist bunch; reciprocally, many in the arts community are jealously, bitterly obsessed with the amount of money spent on major sports and the disproportionate public interest in sport compared to the arts.

The Fifa World Cup would seem to be aggravating the divide. Billion-rand figures being spent on the event, by both the state and big corporates, have been matched only by empty promises of increased 2010 arts funding from the Ministry of Arts and Culture. Tensions have risen within the arts community between those who wish to capitalise on an influx of tourists and an increased international interest in South Africa, and those who see such entrepreneurship as sheer opportunism.

The Kick Off Celebration Concert shenanigans have meant that even musicians - who are typically better placed to match the popularity of sportspeople than their fellow artists from the worlds of theatre, "fine" arts, dance or literature - are feeling resentful towards the footballing extravaganza.

It seems, then, that (to borrow Shakespeare's phrase about the Montagues and the Capulets) an "ancient grudge breaks to new mutiny". But is this really an ancient, inevitable antagonism?

Six thousand years ago, the Greek sculptor Myron produced a work that perfectly fused sport and art. His Discobolos, one of the most iconic pieces of sculpture to emerge from the classical world, depicts a discus-thrower in the moment of poise just before he swivels and throws. It is a fine study of the muscular potential of the human form, of the aesthetic of athleticism - and it affirms that sport and art can exist in symbiosis: sport can inspire art, art can celebrate sport.

The Romans were a less civilised bunch than their Athenian precursors. They mastered the "art" of popular entertainment through chariot racing, gladiatorial combat and other "sports". While Roman-era theatres remain impressive structures, they could never accommodate the crowds that packed into the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum. Even in antiquity, then, there are instances of a growing rift between sport and the arts.

Closer to home, we know that the arts - singing, dancing, story-telling - were central to cultures across southern Africa long before organised sports were imported here from Britain (and subsequently America). Traditional forms of sporting or gaming entertainment such as Zulu stick fighting and morabaraba require physical artistry and mental dexterity respectively. Indeed, South African martial dances (and equivalent international forms such as Brazilian capoeira) manifest the fusion of sport's competitiveness with lyrical artistic expression.

Where did things go wrong? Why do we now place such emphasis on sporting prowess and neglect the arts? And why is it that, in popular discourse, sports are so often the domain of masculinity and virility while the arts are "feminised"?

A number of contributors to Sport versus Art point to the function of television, film and online videos in entrenching the sport/ art dichotomy. Put simply: almost all sports make for great footage, but comparatively few "live" art forms can have their magic translated onto screen. As a result, sport is more accessible - more viewer-friendly - and thus more advertiser-friendly. Station managers and media executives realised this a long time ago, and sport's dominance has since become self-perpetuating.

Sports matches nonetheless contain their own "artistic" moments, and football fans watching the World Cup on TV will be privy to this artistry. A free kick describing an impossible arc around a defensive wall and into the back of the net, or a slow motion replay of a goalkeeper leaping to tip a shot over the bar; these are potentially aesthetic experiences as much as they are patriotic or "'fanatic". Likewise, the unscripted drama of a penalty shoot-out is very similar to the tension that can be created by skilled actors on stage.

Ultimately, however, it is to be hoped that when the final whistle blows, South Africans will seek further drama, invigoration, upliftment and provocation - from their artists and not just their sportspeople.

• Chris Thurman is the editor of Sport versus Art: A South African Contest (Wits University Press)